The silence of the chattering classes ...

... or at least of one chattering blogger.

De Goin' home after 14 years

As of Tuesday 17th, you almost certainly won't hear a peep from me for several days, perhaps until next Sunday or Monday.

I will continue to talk non-stop, as usual, but nobody will hear me apart from the unfortunate people in the nearby train compartments.   And of course, I will continue to tap away at the little laptop, so the chattering of this blogger will return as a deluge as soon as my wifi sniffer gets a scent.

In the meantime ...

De Goin' home after 14 years

Fish flavoured potato crisps

A late start today ... aided by a comfy hotel and a 4 hour time difference from London.  Mind you, the gas mask in the cupboard was hardly reassuring:

Reminds us of the smoke/dust clouds enveloping Moscow last summer ...

De Goin' home after 14 years

No time for the typical tourist trail today ... so forget Red Square and St Basil's ... anyway, I've strolled around there so many times in the past (good name dropping, eh?) ... instead, it's off to Yaroslavsky station to check out the trains (5 kms round trip on foot) ... and then the additional 12 kms round trip to the little Real Russia office where we collected our train tickets.  In truth, we would have used the Moscow Metro for this outing, but it would have required several changes of line, and probably as much time as walking through Sokolniki Park.

And besides, we would have missed the offroad campervans that were being assembled for a forthcoming show in the Sokolniki Exhibition centre ... Vincent Wall, these look just like the ones down under:

Good for our lap of Australia next year

De Goin' home after 14 years

Now that's just too ugly

De Goin' home after 14 years

And we wouldn't have experienced railway crossovers Moscow style:

Hurry, hurry ... I think I can hear a train coming ...

De Goin' home after 14 years

While I'm on the subject of road use, it's amazing that so many cars are still running on studded tyres so late in the year.   Given the game of chicken that many Russian drivers play with pedestrians at the best of times, their inability to stop (the coefficient of friction between metal and a road surface is minimal) means that the pedestrian will never win.

Finally I leave you with a photo of our local Sokolniki Russian Orthodox church ... not as beautiful as St Basil's ... but then the designer was probably not handicapped for being so brilliant ... Tsar Ivan IV was reputed to have blinded the designer of St Basil's so that he could not build its equal, let alone something better, elsewhere:

De Goin' home after 14 years

  

From Russia with Love

Much as I loved the James Bond movies, the Cold War theme is now so out of date ... because ... the supermarket shelves are overflowing ... the Volgas and Ladas are outnumbered by Range Rovers and Porsche Cayennes ... the locals are friendly and smile (well, the younger ones anyway) ... and the show-off materialism is enough to cast a shadow over Texans ... but then Texas is still licking several wounds of recent years.

Anyhow, our arrival into Moscow was uneventful.   Even the immigration officer was friendly and waved us through with a smile, after a quick check and stamp of our visa.   Because we had awkward bags, we had decided that the airport-to-city train service might be too much of a challenge (actually, it had more to do with the late hour and excess of alcohol the night before), and we'd emailed the hotel before departure to book a car.

Three emails later ... one of which asked us to confirmed whether we wanted a Ford or a Nissan, to which I responded Nissan (some parts of Russian bureaucracy are unchanged) ... we arrived at Domodedovo airport to be welcomed by a man in a Ford.  So much for that question.  

But the funnier part of the Request for Transfer Transportation was hidden among the available options:

 I never did find out if our driver was sensible or not ... but he was way more restrained than the Moscow taxi drivers I've had in the past 

De Goin' home after 14 years

How often have you been given the option of a "sensible driver" ... not to mention an offer to pay for using his back way?

We're both quite tired now ... and quite ready for the solitude of the train carriage ... two weeks of socialising has taken its toll.   Unfortunately, we never did rendezvous with Sergey, Alexey and Maxim, the Moscow colleagues with whom I worked so much through 2008 and 2009... but on a journey like this, some things work out and others don't.   

Tomorrow is our rest day in Moscow, and its primary objectives will be collecting the train tickets and scouring those full supermarket shelves for portable yummy comestibles.   We need lots of quick 'n easy food to sustain us through 5 unbroken days inside a Trans-Siberian train carriage.

The adventure has now begun ... and we need a good night's sleep to be ready for it.

Bye Bye Blightie

Finally, the time has come to start our assisted passage to Van Diemen's land.   No more familiar food and intelligible language ... and a test to see if our studying of Russian (Karen) and Chinese (me) will ease our communications or just confuse the locals.

After 2 weeks of meeting, greeting, eating and drinking across Europe, those first 5 days locked inside the Trans Siberian railway carriage will be a welcome period of solitude.  Much sleeping will be done.  Lots of contemplation and gormless gazing ... all without a glass of wine in sight.  Perhaps I can make a good start into the 700-page history of Australia that I have been lugging around Europe.

It was only appropriate that Avgi took us to a pub in St Albans that is reputed to be the oldest in England ...

Oliver Cromwell stayed here one night ... cos he was exhausted from killing ...

De Goin' home after 14 years

before doing battle with the labrynth of the London Underground ...

Lugging bags around the Tube was never easy

De Goin' home after 14 years

A big thank you to all of our English friends ... firstly for putting us up with great hospitality ... and secondly for being such fun.    The fond farewells have left us with fond memories ... but of course we expect to see you all again somewhere sometime ... not too far in the future.

Trainspotting across the South of England

For any of you who are genuine transpotters, this will be a total disappointment.   Already, we have been on quite a few trains ... big ones and small ones, fast ones and slow ones, Swiss ones, French ones and English ones.    But neither of us have the faintest idea of the models, makes or configurations, let alone any unusual features, strange routing, or other quirks that trainspotters would love to hear about.

nice the way they scribble various destinations ... just in case the driver gets lost

De Goin' home after 14 years

However, we could tell you about the quirky people that we encounter on some of the trains, on which trains are more difficult to drag a heavy wheely bag onto, and which have totally inadequate storage for the luggage ... especially when a large Korean tour group has piled their 40-50 identical bags on the racks, the tables, the doorways and even the corridors between the seats.   But we won't.

Having left beautiful Devon, we went to beautiful Wiltshire and from there to beautiful Oxfordshire.   The villages are truly picture postcard ... and even the ever threatening weather has exercised considerable restraint.

Even the train stations are pretty

De Goin' home after 14 years

All of the homestays that we have enjoyed have been so quintessentially English ... all quirky, but ever so lovely ... this here is the latest in Oxfordshire ... the Barn

Blenheim Castle ... just up the road ... given by Queen Anne to the Duke of Marlborough

De Goin' home after 14 years

Oops, wrong photo ... that was Blenheim Castle in Woodstock ... for you Americans, this was the original Woodstock!!!

Ah, here it is ...

De Goin' home after 14 years

Of course, we all know that the English have long been the masters of eccentricity ... and examples are always easy to find ... such as the Please Close the Gate sign when there is no fence attached to the gate:

English cows line up at the gate ... eventho there are no fences

De Goin' home after 14 years

... and the original road signs:

De Goin' home after 14 years

I will finish with a photo of the best loo in the world ... well, at least to most blokes, but also to quite a few sheilas ... completely decorated in badges, trophies, photo montages and reports on the various rallies that Clive and Ces have undertaken in the last few years ... including the London to Casablanca, the Nile Trial (Tunisia to Egypt) and the Peking to Paris. I could (and did) sit in there for hours:

The best loo in England ... without doubt

De Goin' home after 14 years

A lazy Sunday in Devon

Today started as a very easy going day ... short stroll in another pretty part of Devon ... before bidding farewell to those who have to return to their homes and get ready for Monday morning work.

The Fingal Inn

De Goin' home after 14 years

But after supper, for some reason unfathomable to rational people, the wigs came out and Karen took to Andrew's drum kit ... it must have been the cream in the Birthday Cake ...

Karen having a bit of breakfast ..

De Goin' home after 14 years

.. or maybe the visit to the Marble Museum ...

Marbles anyone?

De Goin' home after 14 years

... because all hell broke loose ...

De Goin' home after 14 years

De Goin' home after 14 years

De Goin' home after 14 years

Rock chick

De Goin' home after 14 years

De Goin' home after 14 years

Andrew of Black Beacon

De Goin' home after 14 years

... and the night finished off with some very questionable drumming ...

On the moors

Strange things happen on the moors .... especially after a pint of Jail Ale ... produced at the brewery just outside the gates of Dartmoor prison.

Silliness time ...

De Goin' home after 14 years

But no goofy faces ...

De Goin' home after 14 years

De Goin' home after 14 years

Oops, we're back to goofy faces ...

De Goin' home after 14 years

But all was becalmed again after a round of Willy's Icecream ... available on the moor itself ... here is a mugshot of the group licking their ...

Caption removed by UK censor ...

De Goin' home after 14 years