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"It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the phrase, 'as pretty as an airport'" - Douglas Adams.
So I visited a moderately impressive list of countries on my way to Madrid, but didn’t really get out beyond the airport in any of them except Germany. I was hoping to present a photographic essay on my adventures in foreign airports, but unfortunately they’re a little touchy about people taking photographs of international airports these days. So instead, here’s a not so photographic essay on airports I’ve visited since Christmas.
Launceston International
No, really. If we’re counting from Christmas (and we are), which I spent in Tasmania with family, then the first airport is Launceston. It’s not the most grandiose of constructions out there, but it gets the job done. Sure, you can see one end of it from the other, but they’re renovating and modernising to bring it into the twentieth century. While we were there they were constructing a baggage conveyer belt so they could do away with driving the trailers into the building.
And yes, it is technically an international terminal, but only if you consider New Zealand an independent country. Or if you consider Tasmania an independent country.
Meanwhile…
Tullamarine, Melbourne
Having visited Tasmania numerous times while my grandmother was alive, transferring through Melbourne has become second nature to me. I know the layout of Tullamarine quite well these days, despite having been outside in Melbourne a grand total of once.
For some reason, I always seem to end up eating Hungry Jacks there, whether I’m hungry or not, and despite the obvious risks involved in eating heavy oily food before boarding a flight over Bass Strait. I guess it’s a better way to kill time than buying a souvenir of my time in Victoria. Or a new designer handbag. And there aren’t any other food outlets that look halfway appetising. Furthermore there’s only one place in the whole terminal that sells ice cream.
Sydney Domestic
I’ve been through this one a few times as well, but I always seem to come at it from a different angle, or even a different terminal. Invariably I start at the wrong one. I’ve never had to kill any sizable amount of time there, but everything just feels a lot more welcoming than Tullamarine. The food looks better. You feel less like you’re going to get growled at for browsing the bookshop without actually intending to buy anything.
Short version is; Sydney is awesome and Victoria isn’t.
Sydney International
Okay, so here’s where the real adventure starts. I’d never been here before, and even just the check-in part overwhelmed me a little bit. Seemingly endless lines of check in desks for every airline I’d ever heard of and a few I hadn’t. I got my rucksack checked and picked up my boarding passes all the way through to Berlin, which was handy.
I’ve been flying on planes every few months for almost my whole life, so I don’t know how I managed to do this, but I successfully misread my seat number as my gate number, and ended up going through customs at the wrong end of the terminal. Very embarrassing, but they gave me a free bus ride back to the other end, where I sat for an hour and watched the cricket.
Changi, Singapore
I didn’t have quite as long in Singapore as I thought I would. Actually I had about twenty minutes and had to hotfoot it from one gate to the next. It was night time, so I didn’t get much of an impression out the windows, but the Christmas decorations were nice. I only saw one corridor of the place, but I get the impression that it’s a monumentally huge arrangement of shops and hotels and the occasional departure lounge. Maybe I’ll stay longer on my way back.
Heathrow, London
I pulled in to Mother England at six in the morning England time, approximately 14 hours after leaving Singapore. I must have got more sleep on the plane than I thought, because the time seemed to pass pretty quickly. I had six hours to kill in Heathrow. About an hour of that went in getting a bus to transfer me to the right terminal and getting through security again and figuring out which gate I was leaving from. Then I stopped in at one of the airport cafés. I figured there was really only one appropriate meal to order:
“English breakfast, please.”
It was pretty good for the price, and I must have been hungrier than I realised because I even ate the scrambled eggs, which I wouldn’t normally do.
I spent the next few hours looking around the freaking huge duty free shops. Those things have always struck me as strange things to have in a departure/transit lounge. I mean, I understand the attraction of cheap stuff, and the desire to pass time by buying things. But really, when you’re about to climb on a cramped and crowded aeroplane, who thinks to themselves “you, know, what I really need is more stuff to carry”.
Tegel, Berlin
I wasn’t quite prepared for how cold it was going to be in Berlin. To be fair on myself, the Berliners weren’t quite expecting it to be that cold either, but it snapped cold just before I arrived, and the whole place was blanketed in fresh snow. Fortunately there was an aerobridge thing from the plane to the terminal. I was all ready for the usual forms and bag checks and passport stamping and difficult questions (even more difficult in German), but there was none of that. They just stamped my passport and said “Welcome to Germany”. My rucksack had a harder time getting into the country than I did, since the door to the baggage compartment on the plane had frozen shut. We had to wait half an hour for them to be rescued.
The hardest part of negotiating Tegel was when I left four days later. The check-in counters for my flight were tucked away in an obscure corridor. I had to get a policeman to help me find them.
Ruzyne International, Prague
Of course, half the reason the checkout was obscure was because, in order to secure a reasonably priced flight in peak season at short notice, I was flying a moderately obscure airline; the highly esteemed Czech Airlines. Flying from Berlin to Madrid via Prague is certainly the long way round (although not as long as Sydney to Darwin via Madrid) but it was the only way to do it for less than a thousand dollars.
I ended up spending a lot more time in Ruzyne than I had hoped or expected. It was supposed to be a forty minute stopover, but tragically there was a blizzard in Madrid (!) the day I was supposed to fly and the Madrid airport was closed, so my flight was cancelled. That sucked a bit, but the up shot was that Czech Airlines put me up in the nearby Marriott hotel for the night, which was pretty nice.
I would have gone out for the afternoon to check out Prague, but it was minus fifteen degrees at the most, I was stuffed, and I had cleverly turned all my money into Euros, only to discover that the currency of the Czech Republic is the Czech Koruna. So I stayed inside instead and watched the BBC.
Barajas, Madrid
I made it! And only a day late. Not bad for a week’s worth of travelling. Barajas was kind of boring as airports go, although it does have a kind of interesting yellow and black colour scheme going on, which made a nice change from the traditional blue and grey. Another fantastically relaxed country with nothing to sign or declare as you come through. Actually, my passport doesn’t even have a Madrid stamp on it, which is a bit of a let down. On the plus side, apparently no-one officially knows I’m here, which probably means no-one is going to officially kick me out any time soon.
So there you have it. A whirlwind tour of airports I have known. Join us next week as we examine the fascinating lives of… Petrol stations of the twentieth century.
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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So I started my European adventure in the German capital, Berlin. I wasn’t really sure what I was expecting as I flew in, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t expecting to like the place as much as I did.
Berlin, or at least the part I was in, has the look of a feudal village which has accidentally outgrown its tunic and found itself unexpectedly a major world city. Along the way, obviously there have been some awkward adolescent moments (a couple of world wars and a nasty emo phase involving a large wall), but the city that Berlin has become still looks like a badly done BBC period drama. I say badly done because of all the neon lights and modern technology which would be out of place (if not unwelcome) in Mansfield Park.
I only really had a day to spend checking out the city. I walked through the Tier Garten (quite a big deal apparently) which looked awesome covered in snow. Having said that, I think the place would really come into its own in spring, being a garden and all.
I walked past a few monuments. There was one huge one at the junction of a number of major roads. I don’t know what it was called, but I think it had something to do with what used to be Germany’s national holiday, until they moved the holiday to reunification day. Or something like that.
I made it all the way down to the Brandenburg Gate and then went in to have a look at the Reichstag (parliament house). That place has a fascinating history, having been burned down or blown up more times than most parliament houses, even the ones in South America. And apparently Michael Jackson did a concert there once. I could just imagine the whole field in front of the Reichstag filled with people going nuts and cheering for a crazy guy up the front putting on a show on the steps. Wait a minute…
You can get inside and climb right up to the top where they have this very impressive glass dome thing, from which you can see all over the city on a clear day. Unfortunately it was cloudy and close to snowing on the day I was there, but the building itself was fun anyway.
I didn’t make it to Checkpoint Charlie unfortunately, but I did buy a souvenir T-shirt that makes it look as if I did. Does that count? I’d be keen to get back there some time and spend more time to check out the stuff I missed. Maybe on my way home…
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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I don’t know, is it too cliché to post a Christmas blog? Well… whatever.
It’s weird, but it’s taken me twenty five and a half years to figure out how powerful Christmas carols can be. I’ve always just sort of acknowledged their presence as a sign of the times and sung along with them without realising what’s actually happening.
It starts sometime in mid October when you first hear some old fashioned crooner singing Silent Night in a manner that suggests that he doesn’t actually know where the right note is, so he’ll just slide up and down the scale until he finds it. Shortly thereafter he’ll be joined by Boney M singing Mary’s Boy Child and then whichever pop diva happens to be hot this year murdering O Holy Night.
It’s a crazy time to be a church musician. I’ve played three carols services already, and we haven’t even got to Christmas Eve yet. If I wasn’t nicking off to Tassie for Christmas, I could probably rack up the half-dozen before the season is out without trying too hard.
Playing carols is very different to normal music. With normal music, you’re always looking for a way to spice things up and keep it interesting. With carols, it’s almost impossible to do them any way except the ‘traditional’ way without completely destroying them. It makes them very frustrating to play sometimes, but it is, I think, one of the sources of their great power. Everyone knows how they go, even if we don’t know what half the words mean anymore.
Shepherds, why this jubilee?
Why your glorious strains prolong?
What the gladsome tidings be
Which inspire your heavenly song?
Gloria in excelsis Deo!
We did one service in an old folks home just up the road from our church, and it didn’t seem to matter that some of the words were completely opaque (although, some of the residents looked like they might have been around when Latin was still in common use), because they knew the tunes and had a vague idea what they were about. And that was enough to get them all perked up and smiling. Either that, or someone had slipped something into their tea.
The most random service I’ve done this year was to help out a friend of a friend who was running a community church carols night in Wollstonecraft. All the musicians from that church had gone off on Christmas holidays, so we were the last minute ring-ins. We rocked up about and hour before the start, practised the songs once through and then did the service. Nothing to it, but the locals were so grateful that each of us left with a six-pack of locally produced beer and a giant toblerone bar. Church musicians aren’t usually looking to get paid, but somehow the term ‘precedent’ did come to mind.
But the best one this year was definitely last night. Our church puts on a big community event with a jazz concert followed by a carol and readings service on the north shore under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Somewhere in the region of 700 people came down to join in. The set-up was great, with the harbour and the Opera House as a backdrop, lights, a big sound and a fresh breeze to blow your sheet music everywhere. When our minister got up to give his Christmas message, I reckon they could hear him saying “God is with us” from North Sydney train station.
I don’t think you could get 700 Australian randoms together for a religious sing along at any other time of the year. But chuck in Oh Little Town of Bethlehem and find some sopranos to do the descanty bit of O Come All Ye Faithful and it’s on for young and old. That’s powerful.
So from all of us here at Far From Home, here’s hoping you have a very merry Christmas, and a safe and prosperous new year.
Far From Home
Garry with 2 Rs
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Two days into a new year and two days out from leaving for Europe seems like the perfect time to get a little philosophical about what’s to come. And as we all know, what I really need is another excuse to upload more of my rambling thoughts and incomplete musi…
I recommend skipping the previous paragraph and cutting straight to the next bit.
A few weeks ago I found myself in a strange predicament. I went to see Baz Luhrmann’s Australia with some friends. Everyone else seems quite keen to bag it, but I actually enjoyed it. Being from the Territory, I loved the big landscape shots and the rugged isolation Baz was able to get across.
It made me feel quite homesick at times, which was ironic given that I was sitting in a cinema in Crow’s Nest and hadn’t even got as far as leaving the country, which I’m doing on Sunday. Although Sydney is equally archetypically Australian as a story about drovers and cattle stations is, it’s a long way from the sprawling and majestic landscapes of the Northern Territory.
One of the friends I was there with asked me, quite reasonably I suppose, why, if I miss Darwin so much, do I not just go back there instead of to the other side of the world? I didn’t really have an answer for that one, but fortunately one of my other friends (I’m just so damn popular these days) found one for me in the very movie we had just watched.
“Weren’t you watching? He has to go walkabout before he can go home, otherwise he won’t know who he is.”
I’m not quite arrogant enough (although I’m working on it) to think I can apply Aboriginal spirituality to my city-boy life with any real integrity, but I think that might have been the most profound statement anyone has ever made about me.
So now I’m off to have a wander and check out some new stuff and maybe, just maybe do a little introspection.
Where’s David Gulpilil when you need him?
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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Last Sunday evening I went to a church service at Hillsong in the city. Hillsong is arguably the best known church in Sydney. I was at their smaller Waterloo centre, not the Baulkham Hills headquarters. They run the service in a really modern style; the whole place was full of smoke from the smoke machine, and there were coloured lights and big screens; the whole works. Although the church has been running for years, I couldn't help but notice that, besides a few of the paid staff, there wasn't anyone there over about 30 years of age. That's not necessarily a bad thing – every church has their own niche demographic that they serve.
The music was fantastic. The band covered the whole front of the church and there was a video projection stretching from the floor to the ceiling. It was obviously a well drilled and rehearsed group, and the main worship leader really knew how to work up a congregation.
The worship was more like a rock concert than a church service. The words were put up on the screen, and we followed along with the tune as best we could. It was nice, but I think anyone who wasn't an overly self confident rock star (fortunately I am one) might find it difficult to engage with the service in any meaningful way. But it was nice to listen to.
The sermon was bizarre. They were starting out a new series entitled ‘will you marry me?’ This week they were considering the idea of ‘for better or worse’. I've grown accustomed to having a scripture passage read out and fully explored in depth, to make sure the full meaning of a passage is understood. The pastor just took one passage from Genesis two about marriage then gave us a testimony about the moments his married life had seemed better, and the moments it had seemed worse. His conclusion was that when things are good, that’s great, and when things are bad, if you pray and have faith God will make them better again. It was a little simplistic, and doesn’t really hold up under comparison with scripture or experience, but the congregation seemed to find it helpful.
Overall, I could have come up with plenty of better ways to spend an hour and a half. I just didn't come away from it feeling like I'd gained anything useful.
I don't want to be too negative. The pop-culture religion style works for some people and if you can get past the shallowness of teaching and the endless emotional hype that comes with it, at least they’re worshipping the right guy. It's just not my thing, and it certainly made me appreciate my church a whole lot more.