Some observations from my travels

[artme]

As I have said elsewhere, the Japanese are ineffably polite and helpful.
Japan s as clean as any country I have ever visited.
The Japanese railway network is brilliant.
Booze is cheap!!!

Canada is GORGEOUS and so are the people as they are helpful to a fault, friendly and courteous.
Vancouver has great public transport but other western cities don't.
Canada is expensive.
Paying a bill in Canada is a an ordeal as they have to add a couple of layers of taxes. Then you are expected to tip!! Sometimes 20% s added o bill!!!


This key board is givingme the grfhg;2341 o I will use another keybord tomorrow!!!

Cheers,artme.

[rrich]

I had to make a few business trips to Edmonton, Alberta. Some of the friendliest people I've ever encountered. Even the customs guy at the airport. I was there to install some of our equipment and make it work. I had a portable asynchronous terminal with me and he was really giving me the third degree over the terminal. Finally after about 5 minutes of grilling he says, "Leave everything here and come with me." I'm wondering What's This Foolishness. ( I see that we have a Nanny filter)

Outside the room he says, "Damn it! I'm trying to get you to say that the terminal is a tool that you'll use it for your installation and it goes home with you."

----------------------------

Later I'm buying breakfast at a small restaurant. Not wanting to deal with the intricacies of using US currency I'm using a Visa credit card. It was right after they put the dove flapping the wings in a hologram in the card. The cashier was excited about the hologram and passed it around among several employees and other customers. I was exceptionally concerned and finally as the card made it back to me, a woman standing next to me noticing my concern said, "Don't worry. It's OK. We're friendly and a bit different up here."

--------------------------

I was using the terminal to connect to our e-mail system through the Canadian public network. (X.25 before Internet) The phones in the hotel were hard wired and my terminal needed a modular jack. So I took the cover off the phone and used my alligator clip leads to attach a modular jack to the Ring and Tip leads inside the phone. I go off to work leaving the modular jack attached to the phone. Upon return late that evening there was a business card from someone at the local phone company with a hand written note on the back saying, "You will put the phone back together when you leave. OK?"

The classic, You're not supposed to do that but I understand what you're doing. Just make it right when you're gone.

[Poppa]

I've got some observations. These are my opinions only. No offence intended but if you take some anyway help yourself.

Austrians and Germans speak the same language. But Austrians are friendly and polite. Germans can be quite rude and bad tempered to tourists.

The North Eastern parts of the USA (New England, upstate NY) are stunningly beautiful, and the people are friendly and love Australians. There are also huge amusement parks in the USA that you've never heard of that can be very reasonable for families and are enormous fun for kids. New York City is just amazing. Loud, busy, full of people, dirty, smelly, and completely wonderful. Do a round-Manhattan cruise if you can. The museums are fantastic, as is Central Park. And the hop-on, hop-off buses with commentary are worth spending some time on as well.

Las Vegas is entirely tasteless and kitsch. But really good fun anyway. Senseless displays of enormous wealth abound.

London is my favourite city on earth, followed by Vienna. Everything happens in London. See as much of the non-tourist spots as you can, it is a great city full of history and interesting things for all ages.

Italy loves families with small children. The Italians are lazy, nothing is ever cleaned or looked after properly in their country, but they are also friendly, stylish and helpful. And they love Australians. My favourite country to visit. Italy is also cheaper than a lot of Europe, except for Rome, Venice, Florence, etc.

New Zealand has a huge variety of activity in a small area. The people are wonderful, the scenery is spectacular, and it is a relatively cheap place to visit. You'll love it, everyone does.

Beer all over the world is better when it comes from smaller, more independent brewers. This seems to be a universal rule. Some countries make better beer than others - Australia, NZ, USA, Belgium, England all make great beer. France, Italy, Germany, Japan not so much...

Shopping for clothes and shoes in the USA is fantastic. Find the discount warehouses or factory outlets and go nuts. More and more US businesses are also offering free international shipping - so don't be caught out by the ones that don't. Shipping from the US is stupidly expensive.

Food in Italy and Spain is very good and pretty reasonable. Food in Australia and New Zealand is some of the best you will find anywhere.

In the US, tip and don't begrudge them. But if the service is truly terrible, let them know. Generally they try harder because they know that without tips they can't live.

Sometimes places or things may be touristy - but sometimes they're famous for a reason. We drove 5 hours each way to have Maine lobster in Bar Harbour. And it was worth it.

Happy trails...

[BobL]

. . . . .The Italians are lazy, nothing is ever cleaned or looked after properly in their country.

That's a bit of generalisation. Maybe you never visited the Italian Alpine regions where things are cleaner, greener and more organised that most other parts of the world, and their work ethic and smart technology use puts most of us Aussies to shame.

Have a gander at this post about my cousins joinery factory in the alps.

[AlexS]

I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about the NE USA. Exactly as I found it.

[yvan]

BobL
I had a gander at your earlier post showing your cousins' factory. Some of the pictures reminded me of the mountain villages of my native Switzerland with their wooden chalets built on rock foundations. Cattle stables on the ground floor, living quarters above and, above that, a hey loft. The living quarters benefited from the stables' heat below and were insulated above by the hay!

The structure of modern chalets has not changed a great deal except for the way their timbers are produced - as shown in you post.

Fond memories. Thanks for the great pics!

yvan

[rrich]

I did an extraordinary amount of travelling (30+ Years) for work. Almost all of it in the US.

Driving:

There are probably 350 different spheres of local driving protocols within the US. People that drive in two of these interconnected spheres will drive differently depending upon their final destination, work or home. Almost all of these drivers will not realize that they are driving differently.

There are so many oddities that it is difficult to give advice.

In the Washington DC area, specifically The District, your best tool for driving is the rental car map. The map is folded in half or thirds and held about eye level for all to see. (You don't have to actually look at the map.) Use your turn signals and everyone will get out of your way. The assumption is that you are just a water retaining structure tourist and that you don't know where you're going so just get out of my way.

In the Boston area, the best advice is to just relax and enjoy the show. You will see almost every traffic law broken in the stretch of 16 Ks. Driving in the Boston area is considered contact sport by the locals. And a blinking green light just means go.

I was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, a borough of New York City. I was forced to drive in the city, once and will not do it again. (How to get this past the nanny filter.) A taxi driver once explained it as 90% of the locals have a cranial rectal inversion but they don't know it.

There are two types of people in NYC; those that have vehicles and those that don't. The former spend a significant part of their lives looking for a place to park their vehicle and contribute heavily to the traffic in the city. The latter can not understand why the other group will drive a vehicle however will gladly solicit transportation from the former group. This latter group does not want to endure the parking spot search life style. Amazingly this lack of desire to own a vehicle starts at an early age, even pre-teen, myself included.

In Arizona, Florida and other warm winter climate areas are inundated with "Snow Birds" during the November through April season. (They leave their homes to avoid the harsh winter and snow.) To call these people "drivers" is an insult to most of the driving public. A better description would be "Aimers". But be cautioned that their aim is not always that great.

The Los Angeles metro area is about 160 Ks North South by about 200 Ks East West, but it's not a perfect rectangle. There are probably 8 or 10 different driving spheres in the metro area. Driving on our freeways can be an engineering experience. The more that you understand and analyze the typical traffic flow, the more adept you'll be at reducing time spent in transit on the freeway. (Save 15 minutes over 25 miles.) For the newcomer or Out Of Towner, the best advice is to drive in the "slow" lane. The slow lane usually moves the quickest, average, during peak traffic times. The slow lane is the right most lane here. And most important, just go with the flow.

The amazing thing is that driving south from the LA Metro area to San Diego is like driving to another planet.

There are two other notable bits of information about driving in the US.
Around Denver, Colorado be wary of four wheel drive pickup trucks covered with a lot of mud and driving on the freeways. They are significantly out of their normal habitat.

In the city of Pittsburgh, life long residents carry city street maps in their cars and they are probably the most polite drivers anywhere. The fastest way through the peak traffic in Pittsburgh is probably not on the freeway, hence the locals with maps.

The "Slow" lane
The logic of the slow lane during peak traffic flow is:
When people enter the freeway, the first thing that they want to do is to get out of the slow lane and into the fast lane.
When people want to exit the freeway they enter the slow lane and the first thing that they want to do is exit the freeway.

This slow lane phenomenon seems to be a universal mentality. In peak traffic on a freeway the slow lane is filled and rapidly emptied giving you a lot of space to advance during peak traffic.

[AlexS]

NYC traffic! Arrived at Union station, exited on 8th Ave. Caught a cab to my hotel - Hotel Pennsylvania. Arrived almost an hour later. Had I taken the 7th ave exit from the station, I could simply have crossed the road.

And the Hotel Pennsylvania? Well, I once stayed at a worse hotel, but that was on the Strzelecki Track

[Poppa]

That's a bit of generalisation. Maybe you never visited the Italian Alpine regions where things are cleaner, greener and more organised that most other parts of the world, and their work ethic and smart technology use puts most of us Aussies to shame.

Have a gander at this post about my cousins joinery factory in the alps.

Fair enough Bob. We stayed in Umbria and drove around Umbria and Tuscany for a couple of weeks, and I've also visited Venice, Rome, and Florence separately. So only a tourist. I did also say that it was my favourite country to visit - I love Italy. But in the big cities I think that they tend to neglect cleaning anything or repairing anything. Not that I mind that - I love the place and the people anyway. Switzerland is always clean and tidy for example, but I don't like going there as much as Italy.

[BobL]

Fair enough Bob. We stayed in Umbria and drove around Umbria and Tuscany for a couple of weeks, and I've also visited Venice, Rome, and Florence separately. So only a tourist. I did also say that it was my favourite country to visit - I love Italy. But in the big cities I think that they tend to neglect cleaning anything or repairing anything. Not that I mind that - I love the place and the people anyway. Switzerland is always clean and tidy for example, but I don't like going there as much as Italy.

Sure I do know what you mean.

The neglect, especially of old buildings etc is often because they have so much to do that the money does not come close to what is needed.
This breeds corruption which siphons more money away from where it should be - repeat this a few times and that explains a lot.

When UNESCO drew up a list of the 1000 most culturally significant places in Europe, Italy had ~600 of them. Amazing stuff is everywhere, under the pavement, behind walls and ceilings etc

A friend of mine lives in a 600 year old house in northern Italywith 16ft ceilings and when he started doing some remos, underneath the false ceiling were some 500 year old frescos in a poor state The remo was costing him an arm and a leg but he had to stop, get the art historians in at his expense, they said it was significant and had by law to be restored and preserved. It was estimated that it was going to double the cost of the reno. They went back to the bank and increased their reno loan and now they have fabulous 16th century midnight blue ceilings with gold stars and zodiac signs in their living room - looks fabulous but it cost a bomb. He said he came that close to bribing the workers to just demolishing the lot and I can understand this. This is yet another reason why the country is on average quite corrupt.

Even though tourists and old buildings provide significant income many young people especially are sick of all this. They would just like a quieter life and to live in buildings that are not going to cost a bomb to repair etc but that's not going to happened.

[Poppa]

Yep, I can understand it too. Must make life very difficult. Still a wonderful country and people though.