Cork and water

One of my favourite summer event in London is the Serpentine pavilion. In its 12th year, the surprisingly permanent-looking structures are erected in the spring and dismantled in the autumn. They are variously strange and awe-inspiring. This year's is a reference to the pavilions that have come before. An archaeological dig of sorts, the 12 pillars represent the past structures, while geometric cork blocks wrap around the remnants: leftover cables, plinths, foundation pieces. All is covered by a flat metal disk collecting rain water, making visible the ground water that normally remains underground. How appropriate in this deluge of a summer!

Best of all, stools shaped as champagne corks. A hint?

 

Boris Bikes

Boris Bikes ready to go at Hyde Park

At last- a day without rain. For weeks it seemed as if spending the summer in London was a really bad idea for someone who eshews socks and umbrellas. I am not a fan of weather in general, preferring the bland simplicity of Dubai's perma-sunshine to the chopping and changing of London days, where rain is followed by blinding sun by lowering grey clouds by howling winds. It's July, and finally I am confident that I can go out and not catch a cold. A perfect day to take a Boris bike for a spin.

What is a Boris bike?

Barclay's Bikes, as they are properly called, are clunky upright bikes, built like tanks (23 kg, chain and mud guards, puncture-proof tyres, built-in dynamo, brakes and gears courtesy of Shimano) and liberally labelled with the blue and white logos of Barclay's sponsorship. Boris bikes are named after the London mayor who introduced them in 2010. They are niftily designed to withstand daily punishment by tourists as well as commuters and casual users, with hiring prices cleverly planned to encourage short trips over day-long tours. As an addition to the tube/train/bus network of central London it is to the designer's credit that they are so popular that on a sunny day they are impossible to come by.

Find a station

So how do you use one of these chunky bikes? Where do you pick one up? How do you pay for the ride? As with many activities lately, it all starts with an app. Barclays themselves have designed a very functional iPhone and Android app that looks for docking stations in the vicinity, tells me how many bikes and spaces are available, even lets me plan a ride. At a docking station I can pay for a bike, check the map and dock my bike when I'm finished with my trip.

Barely a bike left...

Card or key?

I am an annual member for £45 per year, so I have a key to quickly free a bike. Before I joined the scheme, I slipped a debit or credit card into the payment point to print out a 5 digit keycode to use on the bike rack's keypad. Having a key has made grabbing a bike so much faster, rather than having to click through the multiple choice screens, accepting terms and conditions, choosing the number of bikes, and receiving the I can be on the bike in seconds.

Planning where to go

The iPhone app lets me plan my trip. I can choose from speedy, steady or quiet route types, and Google map will show me the way. A nifty built-in timer will tell me when my free 30 minutes are up. It would be nice to have turn-by-turn speech instructions, so that I wouldn't have to stop at junctions to check the map or try to memorise the route, and a phone holder in the handlebar would also stop me from getting lost, but built-in GPS units on each bike may be too much to ask for.

Set it up

The bike, for all it's clunkiness, can be adjusted to fit. I set the bike to my preferred height by the numbers on the saddle stalk. There is a holder for a bag welded to the handlebars. No back wheel rack means I can't carry heavy shopping or multiple bags, so I have started to travel light - and avoid wearing trailing scarves or bulky jackets lest I garrotte myself in transit. I check the brakes, pedals and bell and off I go.

The welded bag carrier

Join the Maelstrom

I am ready to join London's crazy traffic. Londoners are more competitive than most other city dwellers I have encountered. While in other countries road traffic can be a free-for-all, a mess of different driving styles like Dubai, hindered by a complete lack of signage like Addis Ababa or just a general flouting of the rules like Nairobi, London has an air of repressed anger funneled into intense competition between the different classes of travellers. Everyone uses and abuses the rules to their own benefit: taxis dash down bus lanes, cyclists run red lights to get the jump on motorised transport, buses squeeze their huge bulks into gaps in the traffic flow. Pedestrians are hyper-alert to any movement around them, as neither the cyclists nor the motorised faction take any prisoners. None of the dreamy jaywalkers of Joburg CBD, if you are walking in London you better have your wits about you.

Throwing a group of amateur cyclists into the mix has interesting results, specially since - unlike other first world cities - London has barely any dedicated bike lanes. Marking yourself out as a Boris biker means labelling yourself ignorant of the unwritten rules of London traffic: every second counts and there is always someone who is willing to overtake you. Don't hope for mercy, because getting there fast is serious business. Boris bikers often dawdle, they may be lost, or vague as to their direction, they are inexperienced cyclists. Their bikes are heavy and unwieldy, so they are slow to react. And the stigma of the Boris biker can not be hidden, it is a blue flag of shame.

The blue flag of shame

One thing I have learnt from the Boris bike scheme is that Londoners are desperate for a new, easier way to get around town. Taxis are expensive, buses slow and the Tube crowded and hot. Commuting by bike is not an option for most Londoners, the distance from their home to the office is just too great and traffic on the main trunk roads into town too dangerous. But for getting round the city you can't beat the bike. I would be reluctant to lock up my bike in public in London, lest it is stolen or removed, but the Boris bikes are designed to be placed in racks rather than used all day. The first thirty minutes of each trip are free, with prices rising steeply for longer journeys, thus discouraging bike hogging. No daytrips along the canal with this scheme, or leaving the bike outside while dashing into a shop, but definitely a quick dash from Oxford Street to Hyde Park for lunch. For casual travellers, or non-Londoners who just want to go for a spin, the system is perfect.

Problems

The bike scheme was intoduced in July 2010. To begin with the fully automated system of hiring and replacing bikes was flaky. The scheme is run by Transport for London, who control all local public transport aspects. But the actual operation of the scheme is outsourced to a private company, and the setup costs heavily sponsored by Barclays. The various layers of management initially resulted in an unreliable process, with people complaining of not being able to hire bikes and being charged random amounts if they did manage to get one. Two years later, and running 8.300 bikes and 15.000 docking stations with a recent expansion eastwards, most complaints relate to the incredible success of the scheme, which regularly results in bikes being unavailable, specially in the West End where pressure comes from Hyde Park tourers and West End party people heading out of Zone 1.

The logistics of the scheme are dazzling: broken bikes need to be identified and fixed (bikes get an inspection on average every two weeks, and numbers of destroyed or stolen bikes barely reach double-digits after two years); bikes need to be relocated to busy areas when a wave of customers have left them stranded in the wrong part of town (the company uses electric vehicles for this so as not to negate the carbon savings from all the cycling); vast numbers of payments have to be processed properly with custom hardware (keys, docking stations) and unreliable humans in the mix.

The future

London's bike scheme is not the first in the world. Many other cities have offered impromptu hire bikes to their population, from Amsterdam to Montreal, many with much superior biking infrastructure, prioritising human-powered traffic over cars. Such is the pressure on transport options in London that any new choice was going to be taken up enthusiastically, by commuters as well as casual users and visitors. The London scheme is simple and effective, now it just needs to bring about a shift in priority towards cycling versus driving. London has shown that this can be done with the success of the congestion charge, gently but firmly forcing car traffic out of the centre of London. If the next step is to pedestrianise the city and focus on good bike routes, London could amost become pleasant to navigate. I am certainly a fan, alreay regretting that I brought my own bike to London with me.

A Walk in the Forest

 

Meanwhile, back in Germany spring has sprung. Crossing continents and seasons, we get a chance to wander from autumn in the South African Karoo, with its freezing starry nights and clear still days, to the fresh green of suburban German parks, tame and organised for the enjoyment of dog walkers and weekend cyclists.

I take a walk through the strips of forest and fields bordering Recklinghausen, a medieval town turned mining centre in the industrial heartland of the Ruhrgebiet. Here slag heaps and steels mills rub up against horse paddocks and wheat fields, the old heavy industry threaded through with recovering wilderness and neat parks.

Mark, my walking companion, has lived here all his life, jogging, dog walking and mountain biking from Düsseldorf to Dortmund. When I ask how he knows where the nice walking is and how he doesn't end up in the grotty industrial estate by accident, he explains that there are regional hiking organisations ensuring the quality of the walking paths all across the country. A 'Wegwart' (path orderly) regularly hikes all the routes to check the signage, looks for fallen trees after rains or storms, controls the cleanliness of the path, marks unruly plant growth. This person is responsible for renewing the complex routing signs, which distinguishes between loops, A to B routes and long-distance tracks. They also record any maintenance work and damage for the local council to rectify.

Mark tells me that to become a Wegwart one as to attend seminars where one learns the correct way to attach a route sign to a lamp post, the appropriate paint to use for marking potholes, the minimum requirements for safe passage to avoid lawsuits from injured hikers. An up and coming Wegwart has to pass an exam or two to show their competence. It they conduct themselves properly they are eventually given expanded route networks and may even be allowed to train other wannabe Wegwarts. It strikes me that the German hiking groups have managed to turn a mildly enjoyable hobby - going for a walk - into an unpleasant chore, complete with studying for exams and the stress of having to work at what was once relaxation. How very German.

 

Since it's Mayday I have discovered another strange German tradition: troops of friends (mostly youngsters) drag a wheeled trolley around with them while drinking beer and listening to the loud music blaring from the stereo on the trolley. Apparently it's entertaining to walk around the neighbourhood and parks all day while drinking.

And last but not least we shop at the local farm store for freshly cut asparagus and new potatoes for our dinner. Asparagus season is taken very seriously here, with recipes traded as treasures, asparagus festivals and wines that match the most popular recipe of asparagus, new potatoes, slices of ham and Hollandaise sauce. A perfect combination, I think. And asparagus season is over far too soon, so we stuff ourselves at dinner time.

 

More from the creative frontline

Talking about making things: since my iPad is my new best friend, I am constantly discovering apps that allow me to create in materials I used to use, but haven't for a long time. I used to be hooked on screen printing. Something about the logic of layering inks, the mind twisting required to think back to front and in mirror image, put me in a special frame of mind. The only problem is, screen printing requires a lot of space, inks, tools, drying racks...

Enter LetterMPress. Yes, I know it's a letterpress simulation, and therefore mainly for text-based prints. But the same brain-scrambling effort required to put together a decent print makes it better than any game for me right now. Only $2.99 to the end of the month. 

Pictures from the road - Madaba

As everywhere else we have been, here truck drivers take inordinate amounts of pride in their vehicles. In this case decoration is in the form of extra bits welded and painted on to the body of the pick-ups.

Chickens keep fresh longer if you don’t wring their necks until after you find a buyer. These guys are kept in cages at the back of the butcher shop - although the rooster is allowed to strut around free.

A front porch to admire. Definitely the sign of a sociable family.

  

Buffy gets around. We have also spotted a very young Brad Pitt, a smooth Alec Baldwin and a pouty Leonardo di Caprio. These shops sell a range of things, mostly fashion or hair cuts.

While Jordan is a predominantly Muslim country, Madaba has a bunch of (orthodox) churches, but I think the reason for this shop’s success is just that everyone likes a good excuse to decorate their house with glittery things.

Hurghada explained: Sign Language

So the main nationality of visitors is German...

and Russian.

The age group is young...

but surely not that young!

How to ... Do Nothing in Aswan

We’ve been here for nigh on two weeks now, and while Aswan has many attractions (Temple of Isis! Nubian Museum! Tombs of the Nobles!), two weeks is a long time to be waiting for your car to arrive (and your spare clothing, and, yes, stationery - I can’t last long without my stationery bag). But we are still here, so I thought I’d give you an insight into our day and how we stave off boredom:

9.30am - Roll out of bed and climb up to the roof terrace for breakfast - it’s the same every day but at least you don’t need to brave the streets in search of nourishment. We have pancakes and fruit, lemonade, tea, toast with butter and jam and triangles of cream cheese. It took us a few days of trying to change some parts of the order (cold milk instead of hot, scrambled eggs with the toast) to realise that it’s not worth the trouble explaining this to the Manuel-like waiter every morning. Now we just eat what we’re given. Thanks to Alex we have a supply of magazines to read over breakfast, and there is wifi internet, so Stuart can get his fix of email.

11am - If the weather is hot (not that it’s ever really cold, but on occasion we’ve had cloud and the temperature drops to a chilly 20C) someone might sunbathe on one of the two loungers, and there is even the possibility of jumping in the plunge pool on the roof. It’s freezing, so perfect for an overheated holiday maker. The roof terrace sits above the busy Salah-en-Din Road, so there is an orchestra of toots and shouts to listen to. It’s easy to while away most of the morning here.

1pm - We are rationing ourselves to one item of touristing a day, so by this time we may get on the ferry to the west bank of the Nile for a visit to the Tombs of the Nobles, or take a fellucca boat to visit the botanical gardens at Kitchener Island. It’s not hot through the day, so practically any amount of wandering round ruins is still a pleasant activity. Unfortunately going to a tourist attraction always involves a huge amount of bargaining with the local 'business men’, fellucca captains or ferry ticket sellers, guides and assorted vendors of food and tack. It’s still hard work, even after our varied experiences throughout Africa, and here bargaining is much more a normal part of the day, unlike further south, where bargaining is mostly part of the tourism infrastructure (i.e. locals pay a fixed price and mzungus/faranjis are charged as much as possible). So we tend to start with a certain amount of hesitation, because we know that the first price we are quoted will be massively inflated compared to the prices charged to locals. Still, with a bit of good humour we normally manage to keep relations civil, and we spend a few hours acting as if we were the average tourist.

4pm - Hunger sets in. We seem to manage with two meals a day here, which might be due to the climate or just that we don’t actually do anything all day. Whatever, we retire to our local haunt, the Aswan Moon, discovered after a thorough investigation of the local eateries (we tried two other ones before settling on this one). The restaurant is set partly on the bank and partly on a pontoon set on the river. A fabric-covered awning keeps out the sun, so it’s a good place to spend the rest of the afternoon till sunset, watching the felluccas pass by, herons coming in to land and generally admire the light on the sand dunes on the other bank where they are not obscured by the hideous construct of the Mövenpick Hotel on Elephantine Island. Our late lunch consists of lentil soup with a squeeze of lemon, grilled chicken with rice, hummus, babaganoush and flatbread, strawberry juice and Om Ali for desert followed by a Turkish coffee. We have learnt to spin this out until it’s dark, chatting with the waiter or Shahad, the fellucca captain, and sometimes we get a visit from Mahmoud, who is arranging for the car to get here from Wadi Halfa (Inshallah) and who regularly gives us updates that turn out to be incorrect.  

7pm - Back to the hotel to watch movies (thanks to the blessings of iTunes, Pirate Bay and the hotel’s fast internet connection). There is more tea drunk while sprawled on the bed in the room, eating the chocolate Alex brought from England - thanks, Alex! Early nights are a given, since there are so many reasons to get up in the morning - not.

This is driving me crazy!

There are many little inconveniences when one moves countries a lot, but none seem so deliberately infuriating and purposely designed to force me to tie myself in knots while trying to do something simple than DVD region coding. Man, as if it wasn't enough that I have to rip or re-buy my films if I want to watch them on my iPod, but to stop me from watching stuff on my computer just because I buy DVDs in a variety of countries that have been randomly assigned to different regions, that is just too stupid.

Of course my Mac should have a region free drive, and of course I could just wait to buy DVDs until I am back in Europe, or I could pay for a download from iTunes and then deal with the DRM on that and pay extra for the bandwidth to get the film that isn't all that much cheaper than a DVD in the first place and includes no extras, but why? How did we get to a place where I am a criminal for wanting to watch a movie? Soviet Russia much?

Grrr.

Just to give you an idea how totally ridiculous these regions are, here is a map. South Africa with Europe, why? And Australia with NZ and South America, good idea! At least Leo doesn't have this problem (as long as he stays out of the US).

What I love about Germany part 3

Fairs are great. They happen at every -generally catholic - holiday, Easter, carnival, All Saints, specially around spring and autumn times, as if to bracket the outdoor and indoor parts of the year. There are rides, of course, big swirly scary gravity-defying ones that make me green round the edges just looking at them, neon lit with speeds too fast for the human organism; old-fashioned slower ones that are more my thing: the big wheel, bumper cars, Kettenkarussell (the one that looks like a spinning top with seats on chains hanging from the sides).

And candy floss, candy apples (I prefer their German name Paradiesapfel: apple of paradise), chocolate waffles, ice cream, licorice and if I'm really lucky, Turkish Honey.

As a bonus this time we had a firework display. Brill!

Zaabeel Park

This new park opened last autumn, but it is so difficult to reach due to terrible signage that we only just went there last weekend.

Zaabeel park is just a few minutes bike ride from our house, so an ideal local relaxation spot now that Emirates Towers park has been turned into an impromptu carpark (boo hiss!). We actually went twice. The first time we had to go by car because Stuart's bike had a puncture. Then we fixed it and went again on Sunday. The differences were remarkable: On Friday the place was heaving, every Indian family took the opportunity to have a picnic or a barbeque. On Sunday there were only national families and women with their kids.

The beautifully designed refreshment shops are closed on a Friday, obviously, it being the weekend, but luckily the local corn and candy-floss franchise has enough initiative to provide snacks.

DIFX Launch

Who would have thought it, after all the long hours, crisis and continent-crossing efforts, the Dubai International Financial Centre actually launched on time.

Since Dubai may not be the inventor of the Soft Launch, but certainly a big fan, DIFX took a leaf out of that particular book and started operations on a small scale on Monday. The building contractors, who had been putting in a lot of hours to get the building finished on time for the start of trading, pulled out all the stops to get everything cleaned up and smartened up for the press conference. This included laying a large area of turf, which has already started to go brown because the sprinkler system that usually goes into the ground before the planting hadn't been completed. Such is the desire to make it look nice, specially as there was a rumour that Sheik Mohammed may attend.

Last minute efforts to beautify the exchange

Still, in the end it all went well, and then it was the party in the evening that was the thing. Everyone met at Lotus One at the Novotel, where champagne flowed freely and the waiters distributed delicious snacks. After that some of us retired to the Kasbar (as in "Rock the..."), my first clubbing experience in Dubai.

There is still a lot to do at the exchange, with IPO's promised to be happening thick and fast and new members joining every week. For now I think everyone is just glad that trading is happening after such an intense effort by everyone.

Getting Prettier ( or: Learning to Get Done Up)

It's amazing what things we can think of to occupy our time here. Yesterday Louisa and I went to get a make-up lesson.

The make-up artist entered the room with a stunning array of pots, tubes, bottles, bowls and brushes, then went off to get some more. We had decided that we had not changed the way we used make-up in the last 25 years, and it was time to get an update "for the mature face", as Louisa so delicately put it. Plus, hey, it would be fun. After being moisturised and covered in a base coat (sorry: foundation) we got to work on our eyes. The make-up artist would do one eye, and we would copy what she did on our other. Not as easy as it looks, specially if you have to keep your eyes closed while she is doing the work. The eyes were a major amount of effort, what with sculpting with colours and shaping the eye using only mascara and eye shadow (and getting my eyebrows plucked for the first time ever!) , whereas putting on a decent lipstick and blusher was completed in a jiffy.

After two hours we were ready to face the World again, Louisa with a great work look and I suddenly transformed into something glamorous and sophisticated (well, at least round the eyes).

Learning to apply make-up with our eyes closed

Peas are in da House

Concert highlight of the year, the Black Eyed Peas were here for a concert at Airport expo.

A groovy session, although it would have helped if the sound had been better. Although Airport Expo is not actually based in an aircraft hangar, it certainly sounded like it. But otherwise the event was very civilised, with food and drinks stalls (even selling six-packs of Corona), free M&Ms and lots of space to dance. We got free tickets courtesy of a friend who won them in a radio competition, but I expect the people who paid something like 400 Dirhams for the VIP tickets at the back of the auditorium were probably a bit miffed to be miles away from the stage.

But the Peas did their energetic hip-hop thing and the school kids as well as the grown-ups were entertained with the usual hits and plenty of backflip action on stage.

Aga-Boom!

Dubai boasts the best shopping malls on the planet, so it is not surprising that it also holds a shopping festival.

This year in its tenth year, it is a mix of January sales with a vengeance and an international trade fair. The festival runs for a whole month, with huge reductions in the shops and entertainments in the streets and at a dedicated site on the outskirts called Dubailand. This large area has been carved out of the desert and fitted with the infrastructure to serve as an outdoor exhibition area. Global Village, the international part of the shopping festival, has this year been located here for the first time. Lots of countries put up more or less inventively designed pavilions to house stalls exhibiting (and of course selling) their respective country's wares. Although this is where we went last night, you will have to wait for a more detailed description until I had time to properly explore.

Last night we had tickets to Aga-Boom, a clown show offshoot from the Cirque de Soleil outfit. The clowns were funny, as usual, and we were also treated to a contortionist and two very strong acrobats. Their act consisted of balancing each other on outstretched arms and swinging decoratively from ropes. Made us want to go to the gym more.