Travel

6 degrees of geographical separation 

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All American medical conferences have routinely between 5 to 10000 registrants, in other words they are big! This “breakthrough” event was small , I would hazard a guess at about 1500 neurologists. On every table at which I sat, the conversation would immediately or within minutes, rapidly open with a passing query as to from whence one came. “Oh I am in Philadelphia, County Clinton, east side”. The other responded that he had recently moved down south from Alaska to New Mexico, County Cibola, west side. 

Now the USA covers an area of 9 million square kilometres and has a population of 435 million. It is a remarkable fact that into which each and every conversation I eavesdropped, not one of the attendees did not immediately give the nonchalant impression that each, to within a bald eagles pin feather, knew precisely where the other lived as they forked food to mouth. 

“Oh yah” each says in a way that reminds me of laconic Brainerd police chief Marge Gunderson in that memorable Cohn brothers movie Fargo. Turns out that each had either been born in the others current town or attended the local kindergarten or went there over more than 25 years to spend every Thanksgiving with their Ma and Pa or did a year of their training at the city hospital in 1995.

This compares to my response if I attend an Epilepsy Congress in Adelaide ( local) and a colleague shares his present address as Clovelly Park in the southern city of Onkaparinga. 


Upon my return will install a similar billboard at the intersection of Grand Junction Road and Main North Road 

Brain Screening can help you think clearly

Bulk billing with Dignity

Norton Synapse Institute

Last day at the Wild Horse Pass 

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I boast that religiously and attentively I attended all the sessions over 2 full days – which were indeed fascinating and many of the breakthroughs will not be routinely available until well past my retirement!

This is the hallway to the conference centre

This panoramic picture is of a nearby “village” called Rawhide! It’s a giant film set and a tourist village basically a forlorn imitation of the many genuine villages and tourist towns- Sovereign Hill in Australia springs to mind

This is the SMALLEST takeaway cup of coffee one can purchase at any and all coffee outlets! Full cream milk is called “2+2” . It may the creamiest concoction to leave a cow’s udder, but it ain’t gunna rescue the revolting black percolated coffee in the monstrous cup. Sadly the Americans fail in quality and predictablely score 100 for quantity. 

As an unrelated aside, one knows one is getting old, when the huge advertising screen extolling the entertainment at the Sheraton Casino, flashes not a 60’s night, not a rock and roll night, not even an Elvis night, no –  Tuesdays are the nostalgic 80s! 

The Naive American – an oxymoron?

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From afar the daily news of deadly gun massacres, the impending Trump presidential ascendency, paints the USA as a confusing, frightening cauldron of reactionary discontent. Yet from my first step on American soil I am amazed at the open, friendly welcoming citizens. They are to a man and woman – genuine! “You’re welcome” they respond to my “thank you” and I actually believe they mean it! 

I ordered for “starters” at dinner last night the Purple Kale, pine nuts, raisins and Arizona goats cheese salad with a quince aioli dressing! My attentive waiter, Brian responded with a somewhat unsettling instantaneous, ecstatic affirmation of my request, so effusive, that I reasoned that I must have been the first person to order this wondrous salad which had been added to the menu 4 months ago at the beginning of autumn and neglected by every uneducated, unadventurous diner till this obviously cultured antipodean gourmet descended upon the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Restaurant on January 13th 2017. It apparently was their autumn signature salad. Again I actually believe he was genuine in his praise of my choice compared to the mostly superficial response “excellent choice” by his Australian counterparts.

Super size me is an American expression and the starter size salad set before me, was sufficient to satiate the entire table of 8 morbidly obese Americans seated at the adjacent table. For one fleeting moment I considered that the serve size of my Purple Kale signature salad was a consequence of the possibility that I was the lone order for the evening, and that the kitchen was faced with the prospect of a rather large barrel of wilting Kale lettuce by midnight. The Arizona goats cheese of course would be all the better for another 24 hours of maturing. I dismissed this as an unedifying if not unpalatable thought.

The other slightly unsettling aspect to my dining experience was that having done justice to the salad, Brian returned seeking my mains order and understandably I guess with breathless anticipation assumed I would opt for the Cheeks of Arizona Prairie Bison poached in elderberry juice with roasted cactus pine needles. I had to politely decline and he became as crestfallen as the Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoon.

Finally it was brought home to me as I dined in the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass restaurant, that Americans have a 2 step approach to eating: cut and dice with knife and fork then drop the knife and use the fork to “spoon ” food towards the mouth. I felt on principle I would continue to eat with both knife and fork as my dear mother demanded all those years ago holding the knife as it SHOULD be held ( never like a proletarian pencil – a solecism that invoked the feather duster across the knuckles).

 To a man I was convinced that every diner lay down their fork and gazed at me as I demonstrated my dexterity and were in awe of my manifestly amazing fine motor skills. 

The Princess and the Pea.

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Let’s face it: 13 hours in an Emirates, Qatar or Qantas 380 is still 13 unlucky hours. A business class seat in an Emirates, Qatar or Qantas 380 is still ultimately a vaguely uncomfortable bed. I have always slept on my belly and despite this, manifestly avoided the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. To compound the theoretical risk, I also confess that I have been a life-long duck-down soft pillow addict. 

These somewhat personal disclosures explain why I not only sleep soundly but silently. I am not a snorer. However I admit openly that I am guilty of the modern cause of bedroom noise pollution – podcasting. 

Anyway the point of all these rather repressed catholic confessions is to set the scene for the saga of the Business Class flat bed. 

The first thing is it’s not bloody FLAT. it’s heads up by several degrees compounded by the lumpy cushion which no matter how viciously I pummel and pound, does not morph into a duck-down pillow at bedtime. “Poor little rich girl” I hear you cry, “guilty as charged” I respond. I empathise with the heroine in that Little Golden Book – The Princess and the Pea. I am still awaiting rescue.

 Secondly there is a gap of several centimetres between the top of my Qantas “flat bed” and the capsule. Through this not insignificant gap, whilst asleep, may fall one’s iPod or worse, an arm. Rescuing the lost iPod from the depths of the business class seat/capsule may require return of the 380 to the maintenance workshop and physical removal of the whole seat. This is a minor hiccup compared to waking up finding one’s dominant arm dangling in the gap between bed and capsule. Should the limb be successfully extracted without the need for amputation, it is invariably completely flail, not recovering completely for several hours and so disabling as to prevent the enjoyment of the pending Business Class breakfast. I may have just as well travelled economy class.

Is it Uluru?

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The Wild Horse Pass Sheraton Resort sits in an arid part of Arizona. It is the venue for the 2017 Breakthroughs in Neurology conference. No doubt this is a great facility and I am going to book in for a Spa treatment and rejuvenating facial mask rub using a very expensive “mud” of cactus sap, coyote saliva and fine particles of Arizona desert sand.

The resort has a similar ambience to the resort complex of Uluru but it comes no where near to the magic of the geography and geology of the Australian Red Centre. But I pen this before I visit the Grand Canyon national park 

Golf anyone?


You may have your cologne but consume it 

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The Severe Australian Custom Regulations according to the Qatar check in person.

I knew instantly and instinctively that the check in process with the Qatar clerk was heading towards a mildly irritating interaction. Given I am flying Business Class there was minimal queue – I approached carrying my rucksack in front and luggage on my back (backpack style and about 15kg). Curtly she requested that she needed my passport and please put my luggage on the weigh belt. 

Now that is a quite reasonable request but it was asked abruptly and in such a manner as to imply that both tasks needed to done not only rapidly but simultaneously. Such a feat wouid be impossible even for the winner of the Gold medal in the clean snatch and grab event at Sydney olympics – a weight lifting event which has nothing to do with what ever else you may be thinking!

Having completed the process and confirming that my luggage had been booked through to Adelaide, she then said “Sir, I must warn you that due to Australian Border and Custom Regulations any duty free goods that you purchase in Frankfurt will be confiscated in Doha as you are not permitted to take them through to Australia “. 

 I was totally dumbfounded. Not that I had any intention of buying duty free goods anyway! Was this, I pondered, the influence of bloody Barnaby Joyce. For final good measure she clarified the ruling by emphasising that any expensive perfumes would not only be confiscated but she said breathlessly, destroyed! So it seemed that any Chanel No 5 I might purchase would be drained away into the Suez Canal.

The statement was delivered with a complex combination of severity and schadenfreude: don’t blame me or Qatar, blame Australia. She saw my quivering bottom lip, how could any country that has just voted back in Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister, be so authoritarian! Then perhaps realising that she had been rostered on the Businesses Class check in desk this morning rather than Economy, she back tracked a little and reassured me that of course nothing would stop me from buying a couple of hundred dollars of duty free chocolates…. So long as I ate them before landing in Doha. 

She was I am convinced a retrenched member of the former East German STASI police force.

In a brain fog I rambled through the avenues of duty free shops with the realisation that like Johnny Deep’s dogs, I had been effectively neutered. Bugger Barnaby Joyce I seethed! I shall buy clothing – wear it on and off the plane AND a bottle of  a 100ml bottle of Tom Forde Neroli at $289… Which I shall drink before landing! Skip the Moet. 

a little something that I am thinking of ordering for my music room

to remind me of the tranquillity of my trek as I sit in the Doha transit lounge and a 7 hour delay


 

Two unexpected extra nights 

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Somehow or other I screwed up with my plans at the end of the Trail of the Red Deer. I suddenly calculated that I had 2 extra nights – unplanned, no accommodation booked, nothing!  So enjoyable were the hotels and Wellness centres on the hike that I requested an extra night in Freudenstadt at the end of the trek! Perfect, now the second night was still up for grabs. I had a train ticket from Freudenstadt to Frankfurt via Stuttgart. So I decided to break the train journey in Stuttgart and stay overnight then travel onwards. 

Some of you may recall that 2 years ago I visited Turin, Italy and found it quite charming with a well maintained historical part. But the number 1 tourist attraction of Turin was a tour of  the Alfa Romeo car factory, followed in second place by a visit to the famous soccer club of Turin, so famous that it’s name escapes me! A distant third was a pilgrimage to the chapel containing the eponymous “shroud”- revealing in the crumbling cotton, a sort of death mask of Jesus.

Stuttgart, according I presume, to the mainly male contributors of TripAdvisor,  ranks tours of the Mercedes Benz factory as number 1   Almost equally attractive being a tour of the Porshe museum at number 2. I am not at clear of whether there is a third. Stuttgart sadly appears to lack religious relics.  I suppose that a mausoleum containing Aryton Senna’s remains, would fit the bill?  In summary, Stuttgart is very much a motorist’s Mecca.

Despite my dim recollection of a classical music history  – Mozart having lived or passed through Stuttgart, I found little remaining in terms of monuments. There  was a “Mozartenplatz,” but every village in Germany and Austria has one. 

This is strikingly similar to the  multitude of  Australian country towns that boast  of the “actual cottage”  where Don Bradman was “actually born”. How this came to pass, God only knows. However to carry on with this analogy, quite appropriate given Don Bradman is God to a significant proportion of our population, I  suspect that Mrs Bradman  heavily pregnant, travelled the outback of south western NSW with Mr Bradman Snr. in a horse and buggy looking for emergency accommodation. 

If the poor woman was progressively dilating from 2cm in Gidginbung to 12cm in Coolamon, finally breaking her waters at Stockinbingal, then who would quibble over a couple of centimetres when it comes to keeping the peace of these small community historical society!
So next time I shall bypass the pitstop at Stuttgart but Frankfurt is worth a stay and with the River Main coursing through the city it had a slight Melbournian feel, here are a few pictures at dusk. 

the main railway station . these are invariably architectural wonders in European cities


I am sure you agree this looks a little like Melbourne from south bank

a pleasure cruise having all the characteristics of a similar event on the Yarra River – loud music and volatile intoxicated Gen Y

The last day of the Red Deer

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A great and fantastic hiking trail beautiful weather, stunning scenery , each hotel was just decadent with their Wellness Centres and great restaurants- basically I had variations of local trout or pork or deer ( as one delightful German waiter struggled to explain the menu in english he resorted to “Bambi”!
So I have had 8 days of walking followed by spa, sauna, steam and swimming! 

“Bambi” in redcurrant sauce

So what happened by 9pm?

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Sadly the evening had deteriorated. The music had increased by a factor of several hundred decibels, so had the ambience,  if that is the correct description, of a melding between the local RSL club and a gay disco….. Not that I have been inside either establishments, I won’t say “never”.  I would say that at least one difference of the Saturday night dance at the Waldhotel Sommerberg, was a fair amount of thigh slapping as opposed to buttock slapping in a gay disco. I have no idea what would be slapped in a RSL club.

However there were redeeming features of the German music – it was amplified through high quality Bose speakers, hence without distortion and the music in general had a recognisable melody! 

Both of these characteristics of course would immediately disqualify a potential gay  disco DJ who must play distorted deafening sound of a genre to which  my daughter is unashamedly attracted, its known as “beat, bass and bang” I think? Why she is drawn to such a cacophony is beyound me – thank god it is either autosomal recessive  or passed on via maternal mitochondrial DNA. 

this hund slept contently oblivious to the constant stream of waiting staff who adroitly side stepped the whole night.

the poodle checks out

delightful! the breakfast tables are set up for families with a reindeer for the children !


 The Buckingham Arms in the Schwarzwald!

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I am seated for dinner at the Waldhotel Sommerberg, altitude about 800m. Here is the view from the restaurant.

 Hotel Restaurants in the Schwarzwald at least seem to open from 6:30 to 8 pm. By 6:45 the place is seething, a white poodle saunters past… It is much more family oriented : grandparents, grandchildren, (millions of children) , crying neonates. 

Then music starts at one end of the room –   a man is playing a keyboard. Its not intrusive and rather foot tapping! No cow bells in sight or leadenhose. I ask the waitress about these happenings and she explains that there is always a party and music on Saturday nights! I have lost track of time and forgot it is Saturday. So there is a smorgasbord, several generations of German families and “Das hund” – the music is gentle and appropriate: the waltz from Die Flerdemaus,  I am seriously thinking of hanging around ( most out of character) as I am convinced that by 9 pm there will be young men dancing in lederhosen to Edelweiss!..or the von Trapp Singers will perform.

The elderly couple with the toy poodle in tow wander to their table. Fabulous! The keyboard man has started to croon…and at a decibel level that does not drown out conversation. It’s all very civilised… If only the Germans had won the war.

The walk was another 25km through pine forests and passing a large settlement which was a centre for skiing in winter with ski lifts ( idle) and ski jumps etc. I descended today from the heights of yesterday, lost the trail 5km from the finish… Yes! 5 bloody kilometres!  Mostly I hiked along a cool mountain stream.  As it was Saturday and sunny, there were hoardes of Germans hiking so no chance of not being found when lost!
Tomorrow is the penultimate day of walking and in retrospect the trek has a similar feeling to my bike ride along the Camino. It was on the Camino that I decided to learn to play music whilst contemplating my sins …