Border Crossings

The barman in the Bethlehem Hotel looked delighted to see us and positively beamed when we agreed to try the only local brew,Taybeh. The bar and indeed the rest of the hotel – a building several storeys high but now rarely fully occupied – had probably seen better days.

Tourism to Bethlehem has dropped significantly since the erection of a separation wall in 2002, with visitors opting to be bussed in to its famous sites by tour companies from the swanky hotels of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem rather than staying within the city itself. Now Bethlehem, busy around the key attractions of the Church of the Nativity and the Shepherds’ Fields during the day, is eerily quiet at night. Walking into town one evening we passed several shops, owners sitting hopefully in doorways and excited at the prospect of passing trade. One leapt to his feet, calling:

“You are English? You want beer?”

When we didn’t respond he tried, bafflingly, “Irish? You want the Virgin Mary?”

We continued into town, the 25-foot wall casting its looming, oppressive shadow at every turn. The wall, explained the waiter at Afteem, a wonderful, friendly restaurant hidden beneath an otherwise silent Manger Square, has devastated the town. It has separated people from their families and their livelihoods in the form of olive groves which ended up on the wrong side of the wall. Queues at checkpoints are often long and remain stationary for hours, affecting business and humiliating Palestinians who brave them daily just to make a living. Unemployment in Bethlehem, he said, was over 60%.

“And yet there is wit and vibrancy everywhere: walking home we passed a cafe cheekily called “Stars and Bucks”, complete with an almost-familiar logo; on the ever-present wall someone has wryly daubed “Can we have our ball back?”

Immobile on a bus in one of those very queues leaving the city early next morning I brooded on the injustice of it all. As I got angrier a young, armed soldier who must have thought I was looking at him caught my eye. He smiled. I smiled back. As we eventually pulled away he gave me a shy wave. Of all my encounters in Bethlehem this touched me the most: this friendly youth, probably on his military service, stuck patrolling a checkpoint in the dusty heat, showing a glimmer of humanity in the midst of a terrible situation that was not of his making.

Wandershot

I love travelling, and am not exaggerating when I say it's one of the things that keeps me sane. At 16 I'd visited just two countries outside the UK; I've now been to 32. I love taking photographs, and thought the selection below might be nice and inspiring for a Friday afternoon.

Hancock Tower, Chicago, engulfed in mist

A lone bird at Masada, Israel.

The Forum, Rome, in the evening, unusually free from tourists

Locals by a Mumbai beach at dusk (this is my favourite picure of all time!)

Christmas Day, Budapest

Inside the cathedral, Vienna (my husband took this one!)

Motocycles, Reunification Palace, Ho Chi Minh City

At the top of the State Tower, Bangkok (again courtesy of my husband)

People in Jemaa al-Fnaa, Marrakech (I think this looks a bit like a Lowry painting)

The old and the new in Singapore

Boats in Zakynthos Old Town

Buddha, Lantau Island, Hong Kong

And finally... Norfolk

Morocco: Where the Mans and the Womans are Equal

I've always been a little skeptical of organised tours, where guides force some cliched aspects of the local "culture" upon you, often at inflated expense, while you slowly drown in post-colonial guilt. Morocco, as I expected, was no exception.

I've been on quite a few organised tours because they're easier and take the hassle and stress out of the equation. I would not, for example, fancy driving in the Atlas Mountains; I wouldn't know how to say "my car has fallen off a cliff" in Berber, for a start. So, after two days of being hassled into oblivion on the crowded and frankly not especially inviting streets of Marrakech, a city which seemed to have deliberately honed an atmosphere of chaotic, eclectic authenticity to inauthentic perfection then thrown in a Club Med and the ever-lingering prospect of catching e-coli for good measure with, I feel, unappealing results, we headed off into the Ourika Valley.

We were a strange and no doubt depressingly common convey – seven four by fours full of lobstered tourists in embarrassing sunhats, hurtling conspicuously along in a country where every second hand Mercedes in the world has gone to die, been painted beige and turned into a taxi.

Our first stop was a pottery, seemingly in the middle of a field surrounded by bored-looking goats. Inside the sole potter made a very small pot while we all stood and watch obediently. “In Morocco,” our guide said, somewhat out of context “All the mans and the womans are very equal. In Morocco,” he elaborated, as though he felt we needed a concrete example, “We do not have the polygamy.” He beamed proudly. The potter finished his pot and added it to a pile of identical pots probably made for identical group of tourists. “Now you shop,” said the guide, an order rather than an offer. The potter got some Tesco bags ready, and the sunhatted lobsters began to haggle enthusiastically while we loitered by the minibus. “The man is very sad,” mused the guide, making conversation. “He has nobody to leave his business to after he is dead, as he has no son, only daughter.”

Village in the Atlas Mountains

We headed on up into the mountains in a scene worryingly reminiscent of the final few moments of The Italian Job, skidding heart-stoppingly close to the edge of a sheer drop as the driver steers with one hand and texts into an old Nokia with the other. Our next stop was a small village high in the hills. “Here,” our guide said, as we clambered out of the cars on wobbly legs and check all our limbs were still intact, “We go to genuine Berber house, and you meet genuine Berber family.” We looked over to where a large group of tourists were traipsing out of the Genuine Berber House, being waved to be people I assumed were the Genuine Berber Family. They got into their Genuine Four By Fours. “That is a dog,” the guide said, unnecessarily, pointing to a dead labrador and clearly feeling that, as a guide, he should do as much guiding as possible. “Here is genuine Berber kitchen,” he announced, and we all peered into an unassuming kitchen where a Genuine Berber Woman posed for photos while holding a Genuine Kettle. “And now, we have tea!”

“There is tradition of hospitality for Berber people. If you come to visit Berber family they will invite you in and they will make you tea and food. This is central to Berber tradition.” We trudged into the back yard where, as if to prove his point, twenty seats were already set out, presumably on the offchance that some visitors turned up wanting tea. Miraculously, this Genuine Berber Family also had twenty matching glasses all ready for these unexpected guests. Then followed an elaborate ritual performed by Muhammad, a Genuine Berber Man, with copious quantities of fresh mint and water poured out of a series of highly decorate, ornate jugs. Our guide kept up a running commentary throughout: “Why you think Muhammad so happy? Why Muhammad always smiling?” Because he’s getting paid to show twenty gullible English people how to make tea? “Because he is not paying the taxes!”

Why you think Muhammad so happy? He is not paying any taxes!

After we’d drunk our thimblefuls of tea we left (some of us via the Genuine Berber Toilet) and headed back up the hill. As we pulled away another six four by fours arrived and as their passengers disembarked I thought how fortunate it was that they had happened upon this hospitable family, who fortuitously had twenty seats already set out and twenty glasses being quickly washed up on the offchance that yet another large group of people would pop round for a quick teabreak.

In other news, we saw this strange sight next to a layby just outside Essaouira: Goats in a Tree! The slightly left-field sequal to "Snakes on a PLane", I presume. I am told the goats climb up there of their own accord to eat the berries, and indeed a friend of mine who recently went to Cyprus confirmed that you can see the same spectacle there. I would believe this, except that the farmer was lingering in the layby and waved us in for a "photostop", for which he tried to charge us ten dirham each (that's about a pound.) Throughout this the goats looked on with bemused expressions that could only say "What the fuck are we doing up here?" I'll let you make up your own minds.

Goats in a Tree. The sequal to Snakes on a Plane

On A (Swiss) Roll

I’ve been on a few coach tours now, and I still have something of a love-hate relationship with them. For a start, they tend to be more than a little contrived - take the happy, dancing villagers of Malaysia, for example. Then there’s the fact that you are tied to someone else’s schedule, so if you’d rather go and take some nice pictures of, say, the local wildlife rather than comparing snowglobes in the giftshop, well, that’s just your tough luck. At the same time, though, it’s a handy way to cram in as much as possible in a short space of time, not to mention an easy option for travelling around in places where independent travel might be difficult to arrange (take the West Bank, for instance.) In reality, it’s arguable the Switzerland doesn’t really qualify for either of these justifications. After all it’s rather small, and you don’t have to negotiate an armed guard to go from Zurich to Rapperswil. Various opposing factions underwent a furious inner monologue: “You don’t see the real country from a tour bus,” said the sneering, middle-class, well-travelled part of me. “You’ve eaten chicken feet in Hong Kong; you’ve spoken to nurses from behind the wall in occupied Palestine. What use is a tour bus to you?” “Well, actually, “admitted the less well-travelled, working class part of me, “If I’m honest that was all a bit of a fluke. I can’t believe my luck, really. Center Parcs used to be the limits of my comfort zone. I don’t really trust myself to explore on my own. I’d only miss things. Best let the professionals help out.” “You raise a valid point,” agreed my other self, adding, with a touch of pride, “you can afford it, after all, so why not? Treat yourself. After all,” (surreptitiously) “you don’t have to tell anyone, just make sure the tour bus isn’t in any of the photos.” “OK, that’s decided then. And it isn’t too expensive...” added my Inner Yorkshireman, forever watching the pennies.
Sign on a Zurich tram

And so we set off into the Alps, indeed into the Kingdom of Liechtenstein, a whole other country, complete with Marcello the Tour Guide, Zurich’s very own caricature. Marcello (a name that didn’t really go with his outfit or indeed his accent) arrived in what were unmistakably leiderhosen, and the sort of hat you normally only see on elderly gentlemen at Lords on test match days, and proceeded to interrogate his clientele.

“Where are you from?”

“The USA.”

“I’ve worked there.”

“Whereabouts?”

“New York.”

“I live in Vegas.

Not to be outdone, Marcello replied that he’d worked there too. Victoriously, he continued down the bus, and got to us.

“Where are you from?”

“England.”

“Whereabouts?”

“London.”

“London?” He looks nonplussed. “I’ve been to London. I stayed in an apartment in the British Museum. I had access to the whole museum AT NIGHT. And I worked for a while in Newquay,” he added, for good measure.

He got to an Indian couple who said they were from Chennai. He trumped this with “I love India. I worked for a while in Calcutta, helping street children.”

His reputation confirmed, he announced that we would first be embarking on a guided tour of Zurich. Having tramped the streets of Zurich for the previous two days, we were interested to see what we might have missed. Not a lot, it seemed. He imparted such words of wisdom as:

“On your right, this is the Walhalla Hotel.” All eyes turned to the right, and a big sign on the building confirmed this to be true. “It is a big hotel,” he added. We all nodded sagely.

“On your left is the UBS bank.” We looked. There it was.

“And this is the Zurich Insurance building. It is a big insurance company. They provide insurance for a lot of people.” Who were we to argue?

We trundled along in silence for a while until we came to a huge, sparkling stretch of water, at which Marcello announced “And here is the lake.”

After the “city tour” we made our way to Rapperswil, a gloriously pretty lakeside spot that you might expect to find people discussing in a Noel Coward play. Marcello did his bit, marching us up a hill to a big building with a turret and proclaiming “this is a castle” before pointing out that below us you could see a McDonalds. Everyone else trudged off, and my husband told me all about the Habsburgs, whose crest was above the door, and who had owned this and many other castles across this part of Europe during their glory days. Looking back, a happy medium between Marcello and my husband would have been just right.
Underwhelming Castle

After lunch (not in the McDonalds) we carried on through the mountains to Liechtenstein, on what would have been an uneventful journey had the man from Las Vegas not decided to be sick half way through. Announcing he didn’t feel well, Marcello responding by shouting across the whole bus “Vould you like a bag?” to make sure that everyone was aware of his plight. Afterwards, Marcello offered him some water... and charged him for the bottle. I can only assume it is this level of gall that makes the Swiss economy as vibrant as it is today.

And here I must pause to talk about Liechtenstein. The part of me that was relatively untravelled until the age of about 25 was secretly rather more excited that she should have been about this little foray into yet more unchartered territory – another nation to nominally tick off in my “places what I’ve been to” list. So I was a little disappointed when we arrived in Liechtenstein and were told we had 45 minutes before we had to get back to the bus. 45 minutes, we all protested? But this is a while country.

“You vil only need 45 minutes,” Marcello assured us.

So we set off through Vaduz, grumbling and muttering that we should have got the train. We walked to the end of the street and wondered where to go next. This seemed to be the end of Liechtenstein. We turned back on ourselves and found the tourist office, which on closer inspection seemed entirely devoid of any tourist information, but for 5 Swiss Francs they would stamp your passport with a Liechtenstein Tourist Office stamp.

Liechtenstein looked a bit like Butlins but without the swimming pool and the kiddy disco, or, to put it another way, like Butlins but less good. Vaduz, as far as we could make out, consists a huge red square that looked a bit like imitation astrotuft appeared to make up the centre of town, flanked as it was by the "Rathaus", and surrounded by some underwhelming, amost temporary-looking cafes selling ice creams made by Nestle, and two gift shops within a hundred yards of one another were selling all you could possibly want in national flags and novelty fridge magnets. Branches of H&M and an Espirit brightened things up a bit, but not a lot. Periodically a small, brightly-coloured train - the sort you might get to ferry children around seaside resorts, would trundle past. There is an unremarkable castle up on the hill, but you can't visit it because the chap in charge of Liechtenstein - the unimaginately named Count von Liechtenstein - still lives there. From his castle he can see his whole country. Frankly, I'd settle for a lego collection or a decent trainset over this. We learned from Marcello - so I would question the validity of this information - that there are 37,000 people living in Liechtenstein; a further 30,000 have post boxes at the town hall, that is to say they are registered here for tax purposes. Of the total 67,000 this lot are by far the most sensible.
Liechtenstein

Twenty minutes after being deposited in the centre of Vaduz we were standing in the sweltering carpark clutching our freshly-stamped passports and wondering where the heck the bus had got to.

But the grand finale still awaited us. The trip we were on was known as "Heidiland", on the basis that we were going to...Heidiland. Yes, actual Heidiland. The area aroudn Maienfeld where the Actual Heidi lived.
Heidi's House: "The Original"

Except she didn't, did she, on account of being fictional. It isn't even the land where the Actual Shirley Temple played Heidi in the movie - that was filmed in California. What Heidiland is, then, is a neat little bit of tourist opportunism, a successful cashing-in on visitors' gullibility and skewed nostalgic memories, forgetting, for a moment, that actually the appallingly-dubbed and seemingly endless TV drama of the early 80s was actually hugely tedious, and took up precious airtime that would have been much better used showing "Round the Twist".

I can't report on the delights of the Heidi House ("Heidi's actual house!") as I chose to spend my CF4 on an ice cream instead, and while all the others were having their photos taken with unconvincing waxworks of Peter, Heidi, Klara and Grandfather in the "authentically-furnished" house, we taunted the goats, sniggered at the Heidi lego in the gift shop, and made the most of the beautiful scenery, which seemed to have gone unnoticed by everyone else.
Posing Goats

I don't have a witty ending for this post. Like the trip, it seems to have rather petered out. After the excitement of Heidi's House, which was clearly too much for us all, we went to sleep as we were driven back to central Zurich, where we saw this:
I will leave you with an explanation of what this cake, made in celebration of the Six O'clock Bells Festival, represents, which is possibly even more humorous - and a tad sinister - than the picture itself.

"Following the parade of the Zünfte (guilds), the climax of the holiday is the burning of Winter in effigy, in the form of the Böögg, a figure of a snowman prepared with explosives. The custom of burning a ragdoll called Böögg predates the Sechseläuten. A Böögg (cognate to bogey) was originally a masked character doing mischief and frightening children during the carnival season."

Jolly good.

The Seaside Town They Forgot To Bomb

In these days of austerity and environmental concerns, jetting off to far-flung and exotic destinations is less on the cards than perhaps it was a few years ago. Ash clouds, strikes, natural disasters and travel companies going bust all over the place are perhaps a sign that it's time to start exploring the delights on offer on our own, accessible, British doorstep.

Yes, delights. And Margate.

I've visited quite a few seaside towns over the past couple of years. I've been on a sort of accidental tour of them, in fact, sometimes intentionally, and at other times to watch football. Each visit has delivered its own little anecdotes and a not inconsiderable amount of rock for family and friends who fall on such multi-E-numbered candy not wholly with a sense of irony. I got engaged in Blackpool, then caught in a hailstorm the same day... in June. In Torquay I encountered a racist taxi-driver ("We have taxi drivers here from Bradford - they come down with monkeys still on their backs") who was a handy warm-up act for the racists who plagued the football match he was driving us to, but on the upside I won a meerkat playing darts. None of these, however, was a match for Margate.

I last visited Margate in January for a "team-building weekend". My five colleagues and I formed one of only two groups of guests in the guesthouse we were staying in, the other being two elderly sisters down for a funeral. Dinner was served at 7 every night by a stony-faced woman who thought catering for vegetarins meant taking the lump of meat off the plate, and gave us a choice of two desserts: lemon freeze cake (whatever that is) and fruit salad out of a tin. The "swimming pool" was no more than a large bath, but we couldn't use it anyway as it was closed for "maintenance", so we spent the nights driving up and down the seafront playing loud music and wrecking the suspension on our minibus.

So I was intrigued to see the "real" Margate. From the Visit Thanet website it looked potentially promising. The website gives no less than three pages of "attractions" one can visit, admittedly only two of which actually seem to be IN Margate, and many of which seem to involve Mini Golf, but we were only going for a day, so how many attractions would we need?

Bristling with excitement - well, OK, bristling with indifference, but let's suspend our disbelief for a while - we pulled into the first carpark we found, and consequently pulled into Dreamland. Now according to Wiki Dreamland actually closed in 2005, which would perhaps explain why what was effectively a piece of wasteland behind a bingo hall didn't look very inviting. What apparently used to house one of the world's oldest rollercoasters (the skeleton of it is still there and looked quite haunting) is now home to a very temporary and bleak-looking fairground complete with second-rate dodgems and poor-quality, unwinnable cuddly toys and one of those terrifying-looking things that whizzes you from side to side whist dangling precariously 60-odd feet above the ground. My nephew was successfully steered away from indluging in Dreamland's pleasures by his dad pointing to one of the ride hands, staring into the distance and smoking somewhat desolately next to his empty ride. "You see the man there? He's the man who's job it is to make the rides work. He's also in charge of putting them together." [Pause]. "Do you still want to go on anything?"

But there are plenty of other things to do in Margate...right? Right. If your idea of a good time is feeding 2p after 2p into a slot machine and winning 5 or 6 more 2ps for every 20 you feed in, then there are hours of fun in store for you in Margate. We counted no less than 3 arcades where you can while away the day participating in this very activity. And, not ones to leave a task unfinished, we diligently stayed there until every single coin had gone, though we did have two plastic keyrings to show for our efforts. From the cosy confines of the arcade we watched as people blew past us, swept along by the howling gale with their inside-out umbrellas in front of them. On the beach, a solitary intrepid child was trying - without much success, it must be said - to operate one of the swingboats alone. The bouncy castle lay deflated and sad-looking, like some unfortunate character in some children's film. A makeshift stage optimistically promising live music sat rain-lashed and abandoned next to a hot dog stall which seemed to be doing an inexplicably roaring trade.

Deciding that perhaps we had exhausted the delights Margate can offer on a typically wet and windswept bank holiday, we popped into the sweet shop on the way back to Dreamland to buy some proper English Seaside Rock for some friends. We found some immediately. Trouble is, it says "Made in Blackpool" on it.

The English Seaside. Once you've been, why would you ever choose to go abroad again?

God bless the Irish

I love the Irish. I've always loved the Irish, because they are good-humoured and have good booze; they throw a great party, and they gave the world, amongst other things, The Pogues and Father Ted. I even love them for populating the world with bars which guarantee I can have a vaguely acceptable pint and watch some sport wherever I am in the world. And now I love them even more because they got me safely home. I love them in spite of the fact that their in-flight entertainment system broke, so I couldn't watch The Hurt Locker for the third time in an effort to catch the end without falling asleep. In fact, I giggled when, after two attempts to show the safety video and failing, a timid voice came over the tanoy saying "All flight attendants to their stations for a MANUAL check."

It seems we are not the only ones who love the Irish. The only other time I've been on a flight that has broken into spontaneous applause on hitting the runway was on a particularly bumpy flight back to Guernsey one winter, and in that instance passengers were showing their appreciation at not being dead, which is not quite the same.

Relieved to be finally back on British soil, tapping away on my own computer with Cocteau Twins playing away in the background as I sip proper tea, I've been browsing various news websites to find that many people haven't been too fortunate. Thousands are still abroad and will be until May. Oh and I was particularly interested by some of the comments here presumably from people who were not left in limbo for days in a foreign country. Now, as it happens, we did, in the end, have a rather good additional 4 days in the States, but this was only once we'd got out of the chaotic labyrinth that was the Response to the Volcano, i.e. personnel from the Foreign Office to Virgin Atlantic taking refuge under their desks and saying "Please don't hurt me!"

So what was the response? Well, it was this:
We were due to fly home on 19th from Washington. Our flight was cancelled. Fine, we thought. This has been going on for a few days. Virgin will have this in hand. So, as instructed by their website, we phoned them.

49 times.

On the 49th time, we eventually reached a recorded message (previous calls had cut us off or given us the engaged tone.) So we settled back to wait for a reply and listening to the recorded message, singing the praises of Virgin's complimentary amenity packs (they come with socks and eye masks. Oh yes.) We listened for two hours and 5 minutes. Then a chirpy woman called Rachel answered (I say chirpy... I'm lying...) Now to be fair to Rachel she'd probably been getting it in the neck all day from stranded Brits and had the right to be well and truly fed up with her lot on life by the time we got to her. Rachel offered us a flight on May 4th. We pointed out to her that this was over two weeks away, and perhaps not entirely practical, and thus followed the obligatory lecture on how we were not the only people stuck (a fact we were well aware of having encountered some very harrassed looking teachers and a hoard of teenagers from if their accents were anything to go by, somewhere in the Midlands, grabbing fast food at the Old Post Office earlier in the day - a position I can't even bear to imagine).The next day the skies began to clear and planes started flying, and by the following day things were almost back to normal. At any rate, US television had stopped covering it (it had been receiving, ooh, I'd say about 5 minutes each hour up until then. In fact, to my amusement, Fox News reported Nick Clegg's performance in the first TV debate above the fact that the whole of Europe was out of bounds, and the rest of the time were too busy calling Obama a Marxist to much bother about anything else.) So we tried to phone them again to see if anything had come up. We tried at 10pm and were on hold for 2 hours. We got up at 5am, and again, after 18 attempts, were put on hold. For two hours. At 7.15 we gritted our teeth and booked ourselves a flight from Boston a whole week earlier than the one we'd been promised by Virgin. Aer Lingus described availability on this flight as "good". We could, incidentally, also have flown into Schiphol, where we have a friend (he doesn't actually live at the airport, obviously, but nearby...) In fact, we would have been happy to be flown anywhere which meant we were on the right continent, and would make our own way back from there. We told Virgin this. They repeated that we had to take what we were given.

I'm not for a minute suggesting that Eric the Volcano (as I'm calling it, not even attempting to pronounce or spell its actual name) was in any way some sort of clever airline ruse to keep us trapped in the US, though I'm sure the US government will find a way of blaming Iran sooner or later. On the contrary, I do have some sympathy with the airlines, who must have all lost millions. However, to all the anonymous and supercilious web commentators out there, I'd like to make the following points:
- One commented that airlines were not putting their seat prices up for stranded passengers, they got to fly for free. Well, not quite. We got to fly for the price we'd paid if we were prepared to put our lives on hold for a fortnight. This would cost us, the airline company itself (who under EU law are obliged to pay our bed and board during that time) and our employers quite a bit of cash, while at the same time there are planes flying with empty seats.
- Yes indeed. We flew back with Aer Lingus - lovely, wonderful Aer Lingus - and counted 9 empty seats on that flight. And yet we were not offered the chance to fly back with a carrier other than our own. Virgin, who we'd paid already, could have offered us a transfer - even if they'd asked us to pay the difference. They didn't. (Some airlines apparently did.)
- This doesn't seem wholly fair. It seems even less fair when you realise there are families with young kids, and teenagers who are meant to be taking GCSE and A Level exams shortly, who are still stuck, and who don't have the money to just go ahead and book another flight. There were two of us - imagine being a family of 5?
- Yes, airlines pay bed and board, but you need to ask for that to be refunded AFTER You get back. Again, how on earth do they expect family groups to just pop sums like that on the credit card?
- Having browsed the internet, I realise that one thing that would be handy would be some sort of site that told you how to access healthcare abroad - what you might need to pay, and, specifically, how to get a prescription if yours runs out, and how much this might cost. Contacting the Embassy in such an instance involved access to a phone, and even if you got this far, you were then faced with another recorded message telling you if you were stranded you should "contact your airline or travel provider." My airline can't even staff its phoneline, let alone dish out drugs.

But, on a cheerier note, I want to say...
- Thank you to all the people who flooded my Facebook page with offers of places to stay all across America - and indeed to their cousins, friends and others whose floors and spare rooms they were volunteering for us.
- Thank you to all the people in the US who made us feel welcome, from waitresses to tour guides (with the exception of the bloke in the hotel who was obsessed with Baltimore. Mate, you need help! Get over Edgar Allan Poe, already, he's been dead for years. Oh, and the father who loudly told his kids in Boston that we had a nerve being there. I know - F and I personally kicked your ass at Bunker Hill and are now almost 300 years old! How can we show our faces?)
- Thank you to our friends in the UK who sent encouraging messages and listened to our email rants.
- Thanks to whoever the artist was who put these cows in Logan airport - yes, I'm not sure if the one on the left is wearing sunglasses or a black bra over its eyes, either...

- And once again thank you to the beautiful people of Aer Lingus.

Passing the time

So, what DO you do when you have an uncertain amount of extra days in a foreign country so vast you probably don't have the time to get to the interesting bits? Well, apart from spending 5 hours on hold to your airline listening to a recorded message so inane it's a miracle you don't end up throwing the telephone from your 8th floor window in disgust (the message begins "Hello Gorgeous, we're SO glad you called." Hello WHAT did you just call me?) there is, I suppose, the usual stuff you do on holiday, namely, for us:
- Climbing up some high things to take in the view. The fewer elevators en route the better. The resulting calf-aches are all part of the fun.
- Finding a good graveyard to mooch around. I love a good graveyard.
- And preferably a big old church to throw into the bargain.
- And, so you can say you've been, some art galleries jam packed with glorified innuendos from artists you've never heard of, but which you have to look at as you pass them in search of the one genuinely famous item in that museum, which invariably turns out to be on loan to the gallery you visited last year.

We did all of these things. In THREE cities. Bingo. Here are some highlights:

New York
A view from the ultimate High Thing, the Empire State Building (though it has lifts - and rather impressive ones at that.)


...and a memorial for 9/11 in a lovely church round the corner from Ground zero:


...and a spot of Jackson Pollock...


Washington:
A view from the tower of the beautiful National Cathedral - bam - two in one!

Oh and this was the Cathedral, in case you're interested:

We then proceeded to the art gallery at the Smithsonian, which was missing various things, but did include the Avercamp exhibition we'd already seen in Amsterdam 3 months ago.

Boston:
A big monument. 294 steps and no lift! Calves ache like hell. Mission accomplished!

And here's the view...

This handily formed part of the Heritage Trail, which also took you to no less than 3 churches and 3 graveyards: I don't know who Ezra Dibble is. I just like that fact his name was Dibble. Anyway, Boston Tourist Board, we love you, and we are forever in your debt. Now for a flight home...

Stranded

So what was meant to be a 7-day transatlantic jaunt has turned into a Kerouac-style 11-day epic, thanks to a volcano with a name so implausibly short on vowels I find it hard to acknowledge its existence. Anyway, because of said volcano (which I think starts with an E, so I'm going to call it Eric) I've seen rather more of the US than I cared to, including such centres of cutting edge, urban civilisation as Hartford, Connecticut...

... and Wilmington, Delaware...

...not to mention some random, seemingly nameless swathes of industry:

Slightly more interestingly, we whipped past Philadephia, famous for its soft cheese and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air:

... all accompanied by an unintentional but appropriate soundtrack of Eels, Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, REM and Emmylou Harris. And if all the above isn't enough to whet your appetite and send you running towards the next Greyhound bus I don't know what is.

And it strikes me that this is one of the almost incomprehensible things about America as far as us Brits are concerned - it's so flippin' huge. Stranded in Washington D.C. with a promise of a flight a whole 12 days after ours was meant toleave (and a sound ticking off from Rachel at Virgin, who told us that there were hundreds of thousands of other people for whom they'd summarily failed to make adequate arrangements once airspace had reopened, and frankly we should ve grateful) we faced the prospect of 2 weeks in a motel in the arse-end of a city we'd already seen, or a trip to somewhere new entirely. The hotel receptionist, for reasons best known to himself, seemed adamant that his stranded guests should up sticks to Baltimore, and his insistence on the subject was so bordering on sinister that I think it's put me off ever venturing there. As we gathered - my other half and I, a stranded holidaying Dutchman and four geographers from Belfast who'd been in Washington on a conference - in the hotel loby bemoaning our lack of funds in this expensive city, he would cut in at random intervals with a sort of petulant drawl: "Go to Baltimore. Got to hostels.com. Take the megabus to Baltimore and go take a bottle of whiskey and sit by Edgar Allen Poe's grave."

Tempting though this might have been, we were eventually drawn to Boston, "nearby" by US standards and somehwere that warranted exploring. It would mean covering less than half the East coast at a cost of a few dollars each, and we'd see states we'd never see again (mainly because there isn't anything to see.) Boston was, in relative terms, not too far away, and would allow us to fly from Newark, New York or Logan with relative ease once Iceland's little shot at an apocalypse subsided. So we booked a bus and pootled off to Massachusetts with remarkable ease and no sense of urgency on the part of us or indeed the driver. 442 miles and 9 hours later, there we were - a journey about 1 and a half times the distance from London to Newcastle. Of the many little flurries of excitement we passed along the way was the welcome sign to Connecticut, which read "Welcome to Connecticut - we're full of surprises" (they lied - I was not surprised by anything during my brief visit) and a huge billboard declaring "When you die you will meet God," with an accompanying picture showing a heart monitor flatlining. I'm still not quite sure what to make of this, or indeed what the point of it was. More amusingly perhaps, not to say rubbing it in, was the following advertisement for Logan airport: This is more than a little ironic, not to say rubbing our noses in our predicament somewhat.

But not as much of this. As we put our heads together in that lobby trying to devise an escape plan, punctuated by an ocasional outburst of "You could go to Baltimore. Edgar Allan Poe's buried there. You can take a bus" a woman of indiscriminate Northern European origin walked past dragging a huge suitcase.

"Well, I am lucky, I am going home" she announced in matter-of-fact, clipped tones, as I tried to figure out if she was maybe Swedish, Danish or Dutch.

"Really? You've managed to get a flight? Where are you from?"

"Iceland."

A cold silence hit that room with a blast louder than any erruption Eyjafjallajökul could muster. Frankly I'm surprised she got out of there alive.

Nothing to Declare

I WANT A PENSIONER!!! Actually, I'd quite like a puppy, too, but Frank won't let me. so until I convince him, an elderly Chinese woman would do as a stopgap.

The idea of having to declare a small Oriental pensioner at Customs amused me, hence the fact I ended up photographing this poster, which I saw in Hong Kong, land of Weird Signs usually stating the flippin' obvious ("Wash Hands After Toilet") or trying to put across something entirely incomprehensibly in cartoon form, like this one:


No, I don't know, either. Something to do with putting meatballs in holes, I think...

A "genuine Malay village"

I've only been on one organised "tour" since I've been here, as I've had mixed experiences of those sorts of things. This tour was around the area of Johore Bahru (though not visiting the city itself, which I'm told is a Good Thing.) We visited some truly beautiful stuff - a large mosque and a mausoleum, some old colonial buildings, and the coastline around the Straits of Johore. Then we went to a "Genuine Malay Village".

Now I don't know what they normally get up to in Malaysia, but if this is a genuine village I can't think that most people in this country ever accomplish very much. It also makes Malaysia seem like a sort of giant, Asian version of Beamish. In this Genuine Village, all the trees have signs stuck to them, in both English and Malay, so you can see what they are. "Palm Oil", one proudly proclaims, as he sits side by side "Rubber" and "Pepper". Genuine Malay Village clearly can't decide what its main industry is going to be, so has a bit of everything in one very small space to be on the safe side. This is very handy for the visiting tourist, keen to get a glimpse into Genuine Malaysia.

Inside the Genuine Malay Village the inhabitants are busy at work making Batik, which is rather intricate and very pretty. Fortunately, if you like them, you can go to the Genuine Malay Giftshop at the end and get some. But first, the people of GMV break into a spontaneous dance routine, followed by a little rendition on some wooden musical instruments. I can only assume this happens all the time in GMV, in the same way that we in the UK frequently leap onto our desks for a quick spot of morris dancing to break the monotony of the working day. And how fortunate that, while this is going on, there happen to be some handy benches, arranged in just the right formation for you to sit and take in this spectacle. If this has all made you work up an appetite, well, that's just unfortunate, because they then proffer durian fruit to you, possibly the single most disgusting thing to come out of South East Asia. I'm intrigued to know what possessed the first person to come across a fruit that smells like a sewer and looks like a hedgehog to think "I know, let's see what that tastes like." And I can't really describe what it tastes like. The closest description would perhaps be that it tastes like an extremely artificial, manufactured, sickly-sweet chocolate centre. It's sort of sweet, a bit like custard, with the consitency of over-ripe melon. Am I selling it to you? Fortunately we didn't take any back, since they smell so bad that they're banned from public transport.

The whole thing would be rather like visiting East London and being greeted by a group of men in caps speaking in rhyming slang, banging some dustbin lids together and breaking into the Lambeth Walk before feeding you some jellied eels. Tourists may think they've had a Traditional British Experience, but if you're that gullible I'm not sure how you'd have found yourself to the other side of the world in the first place.

And so we leave GMV, after three pewter shot glasses (which is apparently a local product, which they thus try to sell to us) of sumptuous cold chocolate drink to take the taste of durian away, several dollars lighter (yep, GMV takes dollars as well as the local ringit, which is pretty handy!) and carrying some Genuine Batik Handkerchiefs, with Malaysia written on them just to prove their authenticity. As we leave the Genuine Villagers have returned full circle and are back to their work, costumes at the ready should they suddenly have the urge to break into another dance, which I suspect they will in half an hour or so, as a coachload of Australians has just pulled into the Geniune Carpark.

Po Lin and the Buddha

So here I am on the other side of the world seeking out the most exotic things I can find, and I found this. I sent this picture, which really sums up the most intriguing parts of the trip, to a good mate back in Europe, and the response I got was this:

"Wow, a fat man at the top of some steps. That's paradoxical..."

It made me smile, and it made me miss home.

The "fat man" is of course the Buddha, and not just any Buddha. Oh no. This, as the literature is at pains to tell you, is "The largest bronze seated outdoor Buddha in Asia."

That's quite a niche claim, and it implies there may be other Buddhas in various positions made of a whole range of materials in other parts of Asia that beat this one hands down. For a moment I'm intrigued as to what other positions a Buddha could take, as I think I've only seen them in the lotus position. Reclining, perhaps, or maybe Buddha standing up doing the ironing, or Buddha playing golf. Who knows? But it's still big, and climbing up the 280 steps to get to him does give you a sort of sense of achievement, not to say aching legs.

The Buddha is the centre of what is, unfortunately, becoming a somewhat tasteless tourist attraction. You arrive via cable car to Ngong Ping Village, which is entirely artificial and a sort of Center Parcs of the East. Here you can sample the delights of Euro Go Go, a pizza restaurant in the centre of the village, and you can buy bright purple hoodies with sparkly gold depictions of the Buddha emblazoned across the front (erm, you will NOT see me in Regent's Park in one of those.) You are given a schedule upon arrival which maps out each minute of your visit. First, you are instructed to "sample the delights of Ngong Ping Village", which presumably means buying some tatt and enjoying the use of a toilet that doesn't involve squatting or reaching for the packet of tissues in your handbag in the absence of anything you could call toilet paper. You are then allowed to go up to the Buddha, for which your brochure allocates 30 minutes. Before this you are supposed to go to the "Buddha Experience" which I think is some sort of exhibition housed in an oriental-style hut that looks as though it's come out of Disneyland. I'm afraid I can't report on the "thrills that will await you", because we didn't go. We did however trek the 280 steps up to the Buddha himself, foregoing the option of purchasing a meal ticket (much to the indignation of the lady behind the meal tickets desk.) This turned out to be well worth the effort. Upon arrival at the top you are greeted with a stunning view of Lantau Island and the sea beyond it. Unfortunately much of this view is now a building site, and the noise of several bulldozers, along with American tourists shouting "Hey, Candy, take a shot of me here!" cuts into the tranquility of this secluded spot. Unfortunately the Chinese view of "development" differs from the European one. In Europe, we'd call it "conservation". Such a spot would be protected, with perhaps a number of small, apologetic outlets being introduced to the area to cover any tourists' needs, hopefully disturbing the prevailing atmosphere as little as possible in the process, and the general look of the place would be maintained. The Chinese however are creating a themepark - the bigger the better. You descend the steps and are greeted by a chap selling bottles of diet Coke and the brand new, shiny "Walking with the Buddha Souvenir Store". Hmm.

After this you are allowed to go to your next stop - the Po Lin Monastery. This is a working monastery and it's a relief to see genuine pilgrims lighting incense and praying in front of the many gold Buddhas inside. Despite the tourists the area is quite tranquil, and even the surrounding commercialism is put into perspective for those of us who've been to Rome and been confronted by the mile or so of JPII paperweights and glow-in-the-dark Virgin Marys that line the route up to the Vatican.

If you're clever enough to sidestep the shops on the way back then one interesting and more tasteful bit of tat that's been erected is the sign telling you where you are, namely 12968 miles from the Statue of Liberty, 1972 miles from the Great Wall of China, and 9632 miles from Big Ben. I've never felt so far from home, and indeed never been so far from home. Commercialist or not, I was reluctant to leave Lantau Island and head back to the frenetic heart of Hong Kong.

Oscillate Mildly

So two weeks into this and I seem to be inadvertantly clocking up as many modes of transportation that I possibly can, from the weird to the wonderful to the downright terrifying. In two weeks I've been on planes, trains and automobiles, buses, trams and ferries, not to mention travelling a distance of around a kilometer on a very big escalator through the centre of Hong Kong and travelling on the underground networks in 3 different cities. Most excitingly perhaps was a dizzying 30-minute ride over Lantau Island on a cable car, which we were warned may experience "some mild oscillations" due to the wind that day. Now I don't know about you, but i'd rather not experience any oscillations while dangling a precarious 400 metres above the South China Sea. But maybe that's just me.

More on that later...

Schimple!

OK so this morning I had 3 injections in preparation for a trip to somewhere I'm still in two minds about visiting. Add to this some prescription drugs, self-medication, huge volumes of caffeine and the not inconsequential lungs full of "it's-legal-in-Amsterdam" smoke I've been breathing in over the last few days, and... well, I'm going to go for a sort of Dutch-inspired stream of consciousness. We'll just see what happens...

So, I spent a long weekend in the Netherlands (I'm not allowed to say Holland for historio-geographical reasons - namely that Utrecht isn't technically in Holland, it's in Utrecht.) I normally try to go on holiday under some sort of pretence of it being educational in some way, or at at any rate cultural. This... well, wasn't, really. But here's some stuff I've discovered:

- A sort of tradition has evolved whereby whenever we go abroad we have to climb something steep and high. This time it was the Dom Tower, with its 400-odd steps. This made me realise a.) I like views, and this one was a good view; b.) my mate is unexpectedly afraid of heights; c.) the training is starting to pay off: no achy legs the following day. Woohoo!
- Public transport elsewhere in Europe is better than in London. Quick comparison: Warren St to Heathrow - trains delayed; had to stand until Hounslow (pre-rush hour!) doors kept failing to shut. Utrecht-Everywhere-Utrecht - double-decker trains, on time, seats galore. Ooh and Amsterdam has trams. You can't beat a tram. Eeee, reminds me of t'North!
- Museums are cool, but the best part of the weekend was listening to my friend hurl random abuse at the people on the Antiques Roadshow.
- The Dutch don't know how to make a decent cup of tea, but they always have a good selection of poncey teas available.
- Dutch pancakes are not as nice as French crepes
- ...but they do love their sausages
- I also love their sausages
- I love all sausages
- That isn't a euphemism
- Ooh and those little deep fried things with minced beef and potato in them...mmmmm....
- Where was I?
- Oh, yes...
- Watching "Goldmember" before going to Holland was not a Good Idea, because it makes you want to laugh at the Dutch language and accent.
- But then, their word for shop is "Winkel" and "whipped cream" is "slag room", so they are asking for it.
- And apparently the words for "mate", "whore" and "rented property" are all the same, which is just screaming out for some sort of sketch to be written about it.
- But nonetheless, putting "Sch" before every word beginning with an S in it does not consitute a Dutch accent and is neither big nor clever
- (Ooh, does that make the Meerkat Dutch?)
- (Why have we assumed all along he's Russian?)
- (Do they have Meerkats in Russia? Or Holland? Except for in zoos?)
- (I'm Confusched.com.... )
- (I said that's neither big nor clever!!! And anyway, that's the wrong advert, schtupid!!)
- SCHTOP IT!
- Ahem. So, anyway, back at the blog...
- I have wonderful friends and have just discovered one of them reads this blog, so I'm going to be nice about him
- He's lovely and clever and wonderful and reads this blog!!!
- And my other mate's not so bad either
- Though his kitchen is crap
- Do they not cook in Holland?!?
- I have an obsession with washing up even if it isn't my washing up. Any washing up will do. Anyone got any washing up that needs doing?
- Amsterdam is a very strange place and I'm not sure what to make of the slightly overweight women baring all in skimpy leather in their windows, presumably to attract passing trade.
- Amsterdam is also cold, but very pretty
- Anne Frank's house is well worth a visit but is inordinately depressing. (I was expecting this...)
- My tendancy towards unprovoked paranoia and anxiety is unaffected by foreign climes and arctic temperatures. I didn't check to find out if it would be exacebated by the legal highs Amsterdam's "coffee shops" have to offer
- Because I'm old and boring
- I have a mixture of Dire Straits and Abba running through my head...
- ...which is an odd combination... and rather irritating...
- I am very lucky to have some lovely friends who make me laugh and feel cosy and warm and are eminently huggable. I had an ultimately fabulous weekend with 3 of my most favourite people
- I'm going to stop typing lest my reputation for cynicism and misery ends up in tatters

Tomorrow is another day.

Some Other Stuff Happened

So what about the rest of the week? To be honest, it felt rather like the gap year I never had, crammed into three days: I lay on my bed listening to the minarets, waiting for the immodium to kick in and watching a solitary cockroach scuttle up my wall, and I thought: wow - this is all rather exciting. Aside from Bethlehem, we went everywhere - Masada, the Dead Sea, Nazareth, Caeserea, Tiberius...

Geographically, Israel is the most amazing country I've ever visited. Roughly the size of that universal unit of measurement that is the Wales, Israel neverthless manages to cram into itself just about every type of scenery possible. Head towards the North, and you could be forgoven for thinking you've stumbled into North Yorkshire, with huge, rough moor-like hills liberally covered with sheep for as far as you can see. Head west a little way and you're on the Med, and could easily mistake your surroundings for Sicily, or the Greek islands. Turn around and head south, and you could be in the middle of the Grand Canyon; mosey into Jericho, and you're in the middle of a desert. you simply don't get this in the South East - frankly a hillock constitutes news in South Camden.

So when we weren't hopping around being Pilgrims we were hopping around being tourists, and the first obvious stop was the Dead Sea. At -418 metres below sea level, the Dead Sea boasts, amongst its more famous accolades, the Lowest Bar in the World, where you can buy coca cola, Budweiser and other products imported from the USA. Admittedly this fades into insignificance alongside the Sea itself, famously full of salt to the extent that nothing can live in it, and shrinking at an alarming rate each year to such an extent that within 100 years it will probably have gone altogether. It's claimed that its waters, 8.6 times saltier than the ocean, apparently, and mud have healing properties, a fact that makes a lot of money for their gift shops where bottles of the stuff are sold by the thousand. I don't know about that, all I know is the water flippin' hurts on mouth ulcers. There is nevertheless something rather exhilirating at being able to fall backwards and then bob up and down with absolutely no effort, and I like the Dead Sea.

Next stop Masada, about which I had strangely mixed feelings. On the one hand I felt a sort of spine-tingling exhilaration gaping out of the bus window at the vast and awesome scenery, complete with the occasional camel; on the other three of us, me included, spent much of the trip retching into Tesco bags, which did mar the mood slightly. Probably fortunately for me and everyone else on the bus I eventually emptied my stomach in the toilets at Masada and happily moseyed up to Herod's fort to some of the most stunning views I've ever seen. Masada must have been the most impressive of palaces, though it's famous mainly for the mass suicide of all of its 960 citizens while under siege my Romans, which frankly strikes me as a bit over the top, not to say daft.

Another seriously odd place is Jericho. For a start we're told that, if we're asked at the checkpoint later on if we've been there, we have to say no. This is something to do with the Intifada. Jericho is in many places a depressing place. Once rich in tourism not only due to its historical and Biblical fame, but also because it was home to Israel's only casino (gambling is banned in the State of Israel, but the Palestinian Authority's control of Jericho resulted in a nice loophole which meant that visitors and their cash came from afar for several years). Since the Intifada, though, tourism has unsurprisingly dropped massively. The casino has gone; the houses look tired and the whole town is in need of a bit of a face-life - it's a bit like Blackpool out of season, only uprooted and plonked in the middle of a desert. We do however visit a fabulous foodstore and leave with arms full of succulent Jericho oranges, dates (which are of less interest to those of us still on the immodium) and Turkish Delight to die for. Jericho also affords us one of the more interesting photo opportunities of the trip, in the shape of PLO-founded Al Quds Open University, its titled daubed in chalk above what looks like one of the body piercing salons in Camden Town, flanked with posters of Che Guevara and Yasser Arafat.

Tearing through the Jordan Valley, gazing into a whole other country on one side of us, Morrissey aptly singing "I will see you in far off places" on my iPod, I am, for a moment, utterly content. We pass by nomads, the children playing outside makeshift, ramshackle, corrugated iron dwellings, camels teathered outside and, anachronistically, satellite dishes on the roof. Maybe they can't cope without the cricket (which incidentally was going rather well this morning... less so now...)

If It's Wednesday It Must Be Jerusalem

I've never been on an organised tour holiday before, and I have to say I'd think twice before going again. First of all, we have a schedule, and woe betide anyone who messes with it. Now I'm all for having a brief idea of what you want to see, and, as a result, an outline of when you intend to see it, but when this starts to interfere with the experience you start to wonder if it's all worthwhile. Take the Holy Sepulchre, for example. We are marched into this grand building, given a brief talk about what it is, then, as we gaze in awe at our surroundings and try to digest that fact that here we are, in the middle of Jerusalem, in possibly our holiest site, our guide interrupts ou reverie with a shout of "Fifteen minutes back on bus, chop chop, shake a leg." We then have mere seconds to decide which bit we want to look at most, which is normally determined by the length of the queue, i.e. if there is one (and there usually is) we need to rule that out. Queues normally form in front of objects of veneration. Our guide tells us that the stone at the entrance is the stone that Jesus's body was laid on after death, except that it probably isn't. We can't get to the stone to make up our own minds, because it's covered with weeping Polish women. Later on in the week we visit another site which seems far more likely to be the place where Jesus was actually crucified, and where the weathering of the rocks carved out what is unmistakedly a skull in the cliff face.

So here's a typical day in the life of a Pilgrim on an organised trip:

- Get an alarm call at 5am, even though breakfast isn't until six and you need all of 15 minutes to get ready

- Have breakfast in the hotel. This consists of 15 minutes repeatedly putting the toast through the toaster (I found 8 revolutions gave you something approaching toast) and 5 minutes eating it.

- Put in your drugs order with Fr Angus, who has morphed into Dr Angus and is doing a roaring trade in immodium in particular. This is probably because we were told not to drink the water before being told "And here's some lovely salad for dinner. Would you like ice in your drink?"

- Clamber onto the bus and ignore the arguments over seats. The bus is a bit like a year 7 classroom, in that wherever you found yourself sitting yesterday, this shall be your seat for evermore. Tough luck if you're sitting next to someone who eats their own snot, or, in our case, in front of the happiest man on the planet, who even once referred to himself a "Happy Colin", and who rises at 4.30am daily to sing praises to the Lord before breakfast. Throughout the day, Happy Colin treats us to outbursts of joyous wisdom, including "This is the day that the Lord has made!" to "Blessed is the day when Jesus conquered Satan."

- Arrive at agreed destination and are promptly shown the "Coffee-Out" (the somewhat imaginative euphemism our guide uses for the toilet. Apparently he'll burn if he says "toilet".) If we're lucky there's also a Coffee-In to help us recover from our early start.

- Finally assemble outside whatever it is we're meant to be looking at. Obligatory group photo follows while the guide looks at his fake rolex and tuts. Thus gathered we are given a brief talk as to what it is we're supposed to be looking at, which usually goes something like this "Welcome to the Pater Noster. This is where Jesus is said to have taught his disciples the Our Father. Except he probably didn't. We don't know. Anyway, here's a nice church built on top of it by an Italian bloke in the 1920s, only you can't go in because there are some Poles sobbing on the doorstep. Enjoy! Ten minutes, back on bus, chop chop, shake a leg."

- Get mobbed on the way back to the bus by peddlars that could have stepped straight out of a pantomime trying to flog all manner of jewellery, postcards, wooden shepherds, water - you name it. We are forbidden from buying from these people: "They cheat you. I take you to nice place where you do lots of shopping."

- Arrive at "nice place" to do lots of shopping. This nice place is run by a Palestinian chap called George who claims we are receiving a 50% discount. Baskets are thrust into our hands as we walk through the doors, and free shot glasses of mind-blowingly strong coffee is liberally handed out as we pile ourselves high with olice wood nativity sets, "I Love Jerusalem" plastic snowglobes (oh yes - with pink glitter in place of snow!) and bottles of holy water and oil ("for annointing only") on which there is a three-for-two offer. As we leave we see our guide getting his cut, in the shape of handfuls of American dollar bills.
- Return to the bus, and it's onwards to the next place on the list, where, invariably, there's another church built by an Italian, a garden tended by Franciscan monks and a couvenir shop run by Johnny, "the greatest woodcarver not only in Bethlehem, but in the whole world." In Cana we are told categorically that this was not the same Cana where water was turned into wine - that Cana was destroyed was destroyed centuries ago by an earthquake. But you can still buy wine by the gallon in its many gift shops. We sampled some of their pomegranate wine - I'm afraid I cannot recommend it.

Anyway, chop chop, shake a leg, we pilgrims are becoming tourists for a day.

O Little Town of Bethlehem

I've never really been anywhere exotic. I've been to some odd places - I've been to Arkansas, which in some ways takes "odd" to a whole new level, and I once spent 3 days in Salzburg talking about lesbianism - but I've never been anywhere that's felt truly "foreign". So it was with a certain amount of excitement that I awoke at 5am to find that I'd been stirred from sleep not by students urinating against my window, which is normally the case, but by the sound of several minarets seemingly competing with each other for the faithful. I'd woken up in Bethlehem, and it doesn't get any more spine-tingling than that.

Bethlehem was so alien to me in many ways as to make Arkansas look vaguely normal. A city of massive contradictions, it isn't the Little Town still-lying under starry skies that you imagine from the hymns and charity cards. This image is even less appropriate these days, when the city is encircled by a huge, ugly concrete wall which the powers that be laughingly call, with a grasp of PR that would impress even Peter Mandelson, the "Peace Wall". This peace wall means that those residents who've even managed to get permits to allow them to leave need to queue for several hours daily at the checkpoints just to be allowed to go to work, so they can earn money to pay taxes, most of which the city never sees. Under the guise of peace, the army is stopping Palestinians from even accessing and thus being able to harvest the olive groves - one of Bethlehem's main sources of income given the products (oil, wood etc) that come from them. Much like the Berlin wall, the wall is gradually being daubed by all sorts of grafitti, from an original Banksy to the undecorated yet dryly witty "Can we have our ball back, please?"

At the same time, though, the wall afforded me one of my more poignant moments of the trip (the somewhat less than poignant I'll come to later.) We had kept silent - a whole bus of us - as we approached the checkpoint out of the city and into Jerusalem, a sort of act of prayerful solidarity with the Palestinians, for whom the queuing is the easy bit. Absorbed in a sort of easy "goody versus baddy" analysis of the whole situation I gazed out of the window, not looking at anything particular. A young soldier with a huge gun hung across his chest, who looked younger than most of my students, gazed back at me. He smiled. I smiled back. As we pulled away and through the gates, he waved. I waved back. A tiny gesture to relieve the monotony of his day, but a little human glimmer of hope in a deeply depressing situation. Of course, they have conscription here, and the kid must have been 18 or 19, and this whole state of affairs is not his fault.

Downtown Bethlehem isn't exactly kicking. A trip venturing out one evening found us heckled twice by shopkeepers who leapt from their front rooms-cum-storefronts as we moseyed past at nine in the evening. The first, who seemed to run some sort of corner shop from an easy chair, shouted after us "You English? You want beer?" We declined and walked a little further up the street, only to be heckled by another store owner who stood in the door of his souvenir shop brandishing an olive wood nativity scene and calling excitedly "You Irish? You want Virgin Mary?"

Our trip into the centre of town encountered little excitement, except an ominous chain cafe that on closer inspection turned out to be called "Stars and Bucks" (the West Bank is happily free from Americanisation, though possibly for the wrong reasons) and a huge Christmas shop that seemed to be open all night and sold the sort of articles you'd buy with a sense of irony even in the mid-70s. Disturbing and garish singing plastic Santas adorned the shop front, strobe lighting attacked the road in front, and a Disneyfied voice loudly rang out with the Twelve Days of Christmas. It was therefore with a certain amount of relief that we stumbled upon Afteem, just off Manger Square, a gloriuos family-run restaurant with no menu, where they bring you what happens to be going down that day. In our case this was real hummus, falafel, salad and lamb kofte to die for, washed down with genuine Palestinian beer (which against all expectation I'd highly recommend, despite the fact it's advertised by a bloke who looks like Borat) Afteem restored my faith in what had appeared during the day to be a sad, down-on-its-luck tourist trap which my inner-Marxist had been brooding on throughout the trip. It was friendly, cheerful, the food was awesome. Oh, and they have their own Facebook group. It seemed like one of many glimmers of optimism in a surprisingly optimistic city, one of the others being the Bethlehem Arab Society of Rehabiltation - an astounding organisation relying largely on outside aid but serving the local community, specialising in rehabilitation and training for disabled members of a society that often shuns them. The centre carries out operations, provides treatment, consultations, support, rehabilitation, training and work opportunities, day centres, nurseries, outreach and crisis internvention. In short, it's a shining miracle in what we shouldn't forget is this most holy of cities.

And so, onwards, through the checkpoint. We're leaving Bethlehem behind - counting our blessings that we're able to leave at all.