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pds March 30th, 2009

After returning from Christiania, we strolled along Stroget, the city’s long pedestrian street that runs through the heart of old Copenhagen. It was busy with shoppers, and seemed to be a nice place to hang out in general. Among a choice of quite a few street-food vendors, we were tempted by the smell of freshly made waffles – expensive, but worth it!

After farewelling Inka at the station I hiked it out to my hotel, the Cab-Inn. So named because the style of its rooms mimics that of an ocean liner. I kind of liked it – it was like staying in one of those display rooms at Ikea where they try to prove you can live happily in a 20 sqm apartment

I took the time in Copenhagen pretty easy, knowing the 10 days at ISFiT was going to be very hectic soon after. Copenhagen is a great city to just walk around, even though the sun hid after the first day, and by the third it was snowing quite heavily. Apart from being a novelty, the snow makes walking into a well-heated cafe, shop, museum or church and warming up a real pleasure.

I think I’ll let the photos that I uploaded onto Flickr mostly speak for themselves. For an urban planner the city is intriguing, with every era of building and architecture from medieval times to hyper-modern, well represented. Like Amsterdam the city had a funky new civic library right on the river, called ‘The Black Diamond’ because of the amazing effect on sunny days of the water reflecting on the black glassy surface (sadly, no exterior photo of that). The new Opera house opposite the library was also a bit out-there, resembling a UFO squatting by the water’s edge.

(Full set over at my Flickr page.)

The Danes are certainly proud of their excellence in design, and I visited both the Danish Museum of Art & Design (Kunstindustrimuseet), and the next day the Danish Design Center. As well as lots of Danish classics like various Arne Jacobsen chairs, the Kunstindustrimuseet had a cool exhibition about the design of motorbikes over time. It reawakened my interest in getting a moto before too long, perhaps one of the classic 60s or 70s models that mere mortals can actually repair and maintain yourself. My brother Vince would have been happy that modern Ducatis were well represented. Over at the Danish Design Center, they had a small but quality exhibition about Light in design. There were a lot of innovations in the pipeline they showed, and I was also impressed that the Danes seem to be a lot further down the road of the “smart house” than elsewhere. With wireless transmitters in appliances, you can start to control everything in the home by mobile phone, saving energy in the process.

So it was a nice stay in Copehagen. It’s a city that I feel like we’re all going to hear a lot about this year in the lead-up to the Climate negotiations there in December, so glad I’ve had the chance to check it out for myself.

Tags: Copenhagen, ISFiT09

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pds March 30th, 2009

I arrived in Copenhagen early in the morning of Tues the 17th Feb, after catching the overnight train from Amsterdam Centraal station. The train trip was quite pleasant really – I had booked a sleeper carriage, which after a while we found we could convert the bunk beds into couches. Since we started out at 9pm, we sat up and chatted for quite a while. In my carriage was a cool Finnish girl Inka, who was a music teacher returning home after visiting her sister. A couple of Germans joined us later on, and then a young North Korean chap. I was a bit chuffed to meet a North Korean, he seemed a nice guy and was going to visit his brother the ambassador to one of the Scandinavian countries.

After a decent sleep, we pulled up at the outskirts of Copenhagen. The city was surrounded by snow-covered farmlands and woods, dotted every now and again with large wind farms. Inka decided to stop in Copenhagen as she had some time spare before visiting a friend in Malmo in the afternoon, which is just across the Oresund bridge from Copenhagen in Sweden. (If I wanted to and had time, I could have taken the train overthat bridge and then on through Sweden all the way into Norway). As an Urban Planning student I was keen to visit Christiania, the famous anarchist “free city” within Copenhagen, and Inka said she’d visited it before and would be keen to have another look. We decided to walk there from the station, and walking along the fresh snow through the park on a clear, quiet and beautifully sunny morning next to the frozen river was quite beautiful.

To say a bit more about Christiania: it was established in the 1970s when some protesters occupied a disused military barracks by the river. Gradually, despite official condemnation the ‘city’ became increasingly permanent, and became a haven for hippies and those feeling hard done by mainstream society. So I was keen to see what such a society would look like 30 years since its inception. By the time we got there, we were both pretty peckish and on the look-out for breakfast. The citizens of Christiania seemed not to be early risers though, and apart from a couple of cyclists and guys standing around braziers and warming up, there didn’t seem to be a lot going on. We did manage to find a pub that was open at last, and settled down for some simple but satisfying pastries and coffee.

I really quite liked Christiania. While the inhabitants clearly didn’t manage the consumerist wealth of the rest of society, apart from the somewhat uninviting main street (called ‘Pusherstreet’ since the citizens tolerate soft drugs being traded there), it had a warmth and human touch that’s missing from modern suburbs. Many of the houses were unconventional and had clearly been added to progressively with ‘recycled’ materials, but on the other hand they also had charaacter, and were carefully maintained, often with a small garden (though mostly frozen given the season). Inka and I particularly liked one incorporating a boat quite skilfully. The children’s playgrounds looked like heaps of fun, and were carefully and creatively painted. All in all, it made me think that we could do a lot worse than self-managed, community owned settlements like that in an Urban environment – perhaps the rest of us could learn a thing or two from the good citizens of Christiania. I for one wish them well, and hope they can maintain their community in the face of pressure from developers and authority to reclaim what is really a bit of prime land on the river and near the central city.

Tags: Copenhagen, ISFiT09, Urban_Planning

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pds February 20th, 2009

I spent three days in Amsterdam, the first of which bathed in pleasant sunshine, and the latter two under gray skies and rain. Over the last couple of days I’m slowly getting back the ‘backpacker art’ of familiarising myself with the practicalities of a new city in short order - the layout of the city’s core, basics of the transportation system, and learning a few words of the local language so as not to sound like a complete tourist.

Speaking of the word “tourist” - if you can’t speak the local language and have no work or family reasons to be in a town, it’s not really a label you can deny. But I feel antipathy about it, since to me it has connotations of loud Americans being rude and taking photos continually. When a local appeared out of a subway exit, asked me a couple of questions in rapid-fire Dutch, then seeing my incomprehension asked “ah, you’re a tourist?” I had to say yes, comfortable with the word or no

The ride from the airport to the city was a clean, efficient, quick and fairly cheap train ride - a big plus in my book. A bit of a lack of preparation meant I was cramped for choice of youth hostels, and the place that I plumped for was ok, but has reminded me that there are youth hostels, and then there are youth hostels While it had free internet and breakfast, it lacked lockers, a kitchen, had dodgy bunks & little furniture, and had the pokiest showers and bathrooms I’ve yet encountered. Have I become a bit fussy, a “flashpacker” (a recent candidate for the Macquarie dictionary’s word of the year)? Not sure - but perhaps a minimum of comfort becomes more important after age 25!

Anyway, on to Amsterdam itself - I bought a 48-hour “I Amsterdam” card, which includes free entry to a boatload of museums, free use of public transport, a canal ride, and various discounts. It’s been good value - the canal ride at sunset on a sunny day yesterday was great, and with the rain today I’ve got good mileage from the museums aspect. As well as the two big art attractions – the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum – there were interesting canal houses to tour, owned by the former patricians of the once-mighty VOC (Dutch East India shipping company). I got chatting to one of the guides, and people here are well aware of the fires in Australia and seem pretty sympathetic.

The Van Gogh museum was pretty special, and they were displaying a touring exhibition called ‘Van Gogh and the Colours of the Night’. It gave you a great insight into Van Gogh’s character as well as his work – it was pretty amazing that the guy took up art as an unskilled amateur at age 27, progressed to his masterworks over the next 8 years, but suicided at only 37. Talk about burning bright and briefly. I really liked his ‘Starry Night’, and also the painting of tree blossoms he did as a present to his nephew when he was born. I also liked to glance at the Dutch narrative signs as well as the english ones occasionlly to get a flavour of the language – one word that struck me was the Dutch for ‘thoughts of a religious and philosophical nature’, Religieusfilosofische.

Of course, Amsterdam is as much known for it’s liberal attitude to smoking dope and red light district as its art in the international community! There was indeed plenty of evidence of both of these – I appreciated the Dutch language once again here, with the euphemism for a bar where you can smoke weed being ‘Coffeeshop” (as opposed to a Koffiehaus, where you really go to drink coffee), and that for a place you can buy stuff to roll your own as a ’smartshop’. George Bush and Karl Rove would be proud of that kind of obfuscation!

Another aspect of Amsterdam that you’re instantly aware of is the prevalence of bicycles and the pleasant environment provided for them. In fact, for the first couple of hours I was constantly on the verge of walking into the path of a rider! It seems this is due to a mixture of the city’s compact layout, the many canals that would make driving in the city’s narrow streets a pain anyway, and conscious policies put in place to make cycling more pleasant and safe. The bikes here are more practical (eg with covered chains and many having baskets) and relaxed-looking than in Australia, and helmet-wearing isn’t compulsory so many riders cruised past chatting to their fellow riders on the way to the pub or work. Hopefully with a bit more reflection I can apply some of the reasons that make cycling fun & safe here in my work back home. Digging canals through the main streets of our cities is probably out though!

I farewelled Amsterdam on the evening of my third day, having booked an overnight train to Copenhagen. While it would have been nice to visit some German towns on the way through, given that I was asked to bring a sleeping bag to the ISFiT conference I’ve decided to spend the rest of the time beforehand enjoying one more city, rather than spending half my time lugging loads of baggage around! I’d love to come back to this part of the world for a more relaxed trip, perhaps in the spring or autumn as well.

Tags: Amsterdam, ISFiT09

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pds February 16th, 2009

On Monday I hired a Fiat 500 sport, and after a dubious start stalling on the way out of the car rental lot got to quite enjoy it. It is a very small car, but despite initial worries i’d be like that tall guy on the Simpsons in the ridiculously small car, it turned out to be quite roomy. All six gears turned out to be necessary on the Motorways as well - although the speed limit might be 70mph, many Britons interpret that very loosely and scream by at about 90mph (about 150kmh). This applies rain, hail or shine by the way. There was some concern that the roads would be snowed in while i was there and they were running low on road salt, but I didn’t run into any trouble of that sort myself.

So after a somewhat worrying few hours on the motorways, and an unremarkable stay in Nottingham for the night, I made it up to my uncle Ken & auntie Edith’s place in Richmond, a charming old market town in the Yorkshire Dales. After the hustle & crowds of London and the Motorways, the dales really felt like a different country. Richmond is a great little town, full of stone houses, lots of pubs and (presumably) visitors from the south looking for some fresh air and a good walk.

Ken & Edith and my cousin Carina were very welcoming and looked after me well, including a drive round the other small Yorkshire villages where he and my Dad grew up (with great names like Leyburn, Askrigg, Hawes and Redcar). Having lived there most of his life and being a keen walker, Ken is a font of knowledge about local life, myths and history. The weather was cold but fine, and with the dales still mostly snow-covered the views were pretty special, a veritable “winter wonderland”.

We did talk about Australia quite a bit with the fires still being one of the main news stories – Edith’s view of our cultural life still seems to be based on Dame Edna, Sir Les Patterson and They’re a Weird Mob Ken told me he’s an avowed republican though, partly because he’s none too impressed by the way the Lords and Ladies who still hold much of the farmland round the dales behave. Carina has taken up the family penchant for genealogy, and is trying to trace our maternal grandmother’s family (the Stacey’s) back through their time in India while it was still part of the British empire.

On the last night of my stay we watched England being outclassed by Spain in a friendly football international – the one highlight was Becks getting his record-equalling 106^th England cap, and putting in a good game to boot. Posh and Becks are the other form of Royalty here of course, and Karina is sure that Beckham’s wish to return to Europe will be “the end of them” as a couple.

On the way back South, I decided to visit and stay in Welwyn Garden City on the outskirts of London to catch my morning flight the next day. For an urban planning student I considered this a bit of a pilgrimage, as Ebenezer Howard’s idealistic view of the Garden City was a key development in urban planning (for better or for worse) that we looked at a lot in my course this year. Welwyn my not have lived up to Howard’s ideal, but it did have a friendly small town vibe about it, and seemed to have balanced the elegant formal landscaping with the trends of modern life (roads and shopping centres) quite well.

Tags: ISFiT09, UK, Welwyn Garden City, Yorkshire

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pds February 16th, 2009

There was still plenty of snow about by the time I arrived in London, though it had cleared enough that the city seemed to be running pretty much as usual. Apparently the closure of the Tube and bus network the week before had brought the city almost to a halt, and my Aussie friends working in London said most people had just stayed home – it seemed to be a badge of honour if you’d actually made it in to work.

I was pretty lacksadaisical in my preparations for London, taking the tube in to the centre of town and trusting I knew my way around from previous visits well enough to make a start. My first mission was to buy some decent smart boots that would be weather-ready for this trip, as I hadn’t had time to pick some up in Australia first. I also had the good fortune to get to Westminster in time to meet my friend Luke who works for HM’s treasury there. He pointed out all the remains of snowmen in St James’s Park, where the lake is still mostly frozen over.

London doesn’t look its best in the grey rainy winter weather that I arrived in. It did look a lot more glamorous under lights that night when I met up with Luke again & wandered around Chelsea – it seems every second elegant terrace there is the former residence of a great poet, politician or writer. Luke says Christmas there was pretty special, and I’d believe it.

The next day fined up quite a bit, and I did some more shopping to add to my new boots bought at Marks & Spencer. My plan of coming only semi-prepared for the icy European winter and then stocking up in London seems to have worked ok as there are plenty of sales on here and of course a good range catering to every sense of style and budget. The economic situation is of course dominating the media, and there are indeed a lot of sales on, but the capital and former imperial city still bustles and business and political life goes on. I caught up with several good expat Aussie friends for a pub lunch in Covent Garden, and it’s good to hear the recession doesn’t seem to have injured their job prospects, although a couple were thinking of returning to sunny Victorian skies for other reasons.

On Sunday I went in on a crisp morning, that was quite pleasant once the winter sun managed to get high enough in the sky to peek through the clouds. It seems on the Sabbath the city is pretty much given over to tourists for the day, and I mingled amongst them taking a morning constitutional through Green Park down to Buckingham Palace. As an urban planner & designer in training I did notice how the formal landscaping and grand architecture did allow a feeling of imperial granduer and authority to linger on, even if the British Empire is long gone. There was no changing of the guard that day, but a small detachment of royal lancer cavalry trotted by, with pomelled helmets and swords raised, which appealed to my romantic side. I decided not to go too hard on the museum-and-gallery visiting this early in the trip, especially as I’ve had the opportunity to do that previously in London, but I did get down to St Paul’s cathedral, and later in the afternoon to the British museum and nearby Bloomsbury, historic home of London’s left wing intellectual layabouts.

So only a brief visit to London, but at least I did a few different things this time, and it’s good to have other things to look forward to on a future visit. No doubt you could spend months there just exploring all the great little shopping strips, public parks, musuems etc. As usual after initially being a bit overwhelming the city seems to grow on me, and while walking round I did imagine how I would go living there myself. If you can stomach the grey weather and crowds the city certainly has a glamorous appeal – though I do find myself looking forward to the more relaxed pace of life, warm climate and apartment near the beach in Adelaide for the moment

Tags: ISFiT09, London

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pds February 7th, 2009

Flying from Australia to Europe is always a stretch I think. As a kid it seemed like an adventure. As I get a little older, I can start to see why some of my relatives in the UK would say things like ‘oh, I’d love to come to Australia, but I can’t stomach the idea of a 22 hour flight!”.

I did have a bit of a first this trip though – a free upgrade to business class, on account of my lanky frame and a nice bloke at the Emirates check-in desk. It was a bit of an eye-opener for a veteran of many “cattle class” flights, to see what life’s like behind the little curtain up front. The food was probably the most striking difference – instead of eating the plane food being an obligation to keep your strength up, it was a genuine pleasure! You know, it actually tasted pretty close to the appealing descriptions on the menu, something I’ve become very skeptical about previously. So I certainly won’t be sending a letter to Mr Emirates Air like the celebrated one mailed to Richard Branson recently. Of course, the ample leg-room and very adjustable chair didn’t go astray either, even including the novelty of an electronic massage

It did make me reflect on how egalitarian our society really is though. From go to whoa there are a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle things done to try to create a sense of privelige and superiority in business class flyers vs. economy. As someone who wears a Che Guevara t-shirt on occasion, I felt a tad uncomfortable about all that. On my flight the business class section was less than half full, and a regular occurrence was a couple of blokes trying to sneak in from economy to sleep in the empty back row, only to be politely but persistently chased back by the stewards. The only exception to this rule was a very cute little african girl with a radiant smile who seemed irresistably drawn to go and look at the mysterious passengers up the front. In the end the head steward had to distract her with the colourful pictures on the safety card to get her to go back to her folks The other thing about that steward is he spoke with a thick scandinavian accent and kept addressing me as “gentlemen”, reminding me of CATS from the immortal “all your base belong to us!” video. Fortunately, the resemblance ended there.

Our stopover was in Dubai, where Emirates have built a terminal all to themselves. I had a great view of the city on the way in, a place I was not a little curious about due to all the press and discussion it gets back in Australia - as the city of outrageous towers built on the region’s incredible petro-wealth of the last century. Some of the buildings really are amazing, including one that i think is still the tallest in the world. It reminded me of a set from a sci-fi or manga movie – you could imagine it as a location in Frank Herbert’s Dune for example. Though I think the Petronas twin towers are still my favourite sky-scrapers with their fusion of islamic, chinese and western architectural motifs.

Finally after another 7 hour flight to add to the 14+ hour first one (this time back in economy), I made it to London Heathrow about 6pm in the evening. I am lucky enough to have a British passport through my father’s side of the family, but had intended to travel on my Australian passport to keep things simple. I guess they don’t get many tourists to the UK from Australia this time of year, because the customs officer I saw seemed quite suspicious and asked me several pointed questions about my trip. Not so cool after nearly 48 hours without a proper sleep – when you don’t exactly feel at your most relaxed, loquacious and chatty. Still I made it onto the chilly ground of the ‘mother country’ soon enough. and after a quick ride on the tube got to my B&B in Ealing, a suburb in London’s west and handlily near the airport, fell into bed to catch up on some much-needed sleep.

Tags: flying, ISFiT09

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pds February 5th, 2009

Well, it’s almost 2AM and I’m sitting at a Tullamarine departure gate, waiting for my 2:55AM flight to get this trip kicked off for real.

Yep, I’m Europe-bound again, almost seven years after my last visit there. The main reason? I’ve been lucky enough to be invited to the 2009 International Student Festival in Trondheim (ISFiT09), coming up on the 20^th February for a week. And I figure, seeing as I’m spending the time, money, and greenhouse emissions to go all that way, I might as well get a few side-trips in first!

ISFiT itself sounds really cool – you can check it out at http://www.isfit.org . It’s been going biennially since 1990, and seems to really push some boundaries each time. Last time for example, they held a simulated “world parliament” between all the students there – would have been interesting. The theme of this year’s festival is “Peacebuilding”, and I’ll be primarily participating in the Energy & Technology workshop throughout the week. It’s all a bit daunting, but I hope I’ll have something to contribute and enjoy myself along the way!

So what’re my plans before getting up to Norway for ISFiT? I’ll be flying in to the UK first, where I’ll have a chance to catch up with several mates who are making their home in London right now. Then I’m planning to hire a car, and get up to the Yorkshire Dales to visit my two uncles there, and other members of the Old Dart-based Sunter clan no doubt. After that I’ll cruise over to the Continent, and am hoping to visit Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and perhaps some other cities the train passes through. We’ll see what serendipity brings.

I’m leaving these fine shores for the second time in a year - the last trip was to Malaysia for my Uni’s Planning Study Visit there in September). The Adelaide to Melbourne flight was already a good start, I had a window seat and was able to get a good gander at the unique geological formations illuminated by the evening sun. It reminded me of my days at VPAC working with geologists like Mike Sandiford, who always waxed lyrical about the complex & unique geology at the junction between South Australia and Victoria.

Well, hopefully the boarding call will come soon and we can get this road on the show – looking forward to it, hopefully after a decent sleep on the plane!

Tags: ISFiT09

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pds June 1st, 2008

I just found the Handicap Calculator at Real Tennis Online.

So if I can’t actually play Real Tennis yet here in Adelaide, at least I can plot my matches for when I next visit Ballarat - like against my brother Jules.

Tags: Ballarat, real tennis

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pds May 29th, 2008

I was just searching the location of a shipping business in my home town of Ballarat, when I noticed that their display of the major hospitals in Ballarat (the Ballarat Base Hospital and St John of God’s) and is quite misleading!

Locals of the town can check it out and see here.

It seems what they have labelled “Ballarat Base Hospital” should read “QEC Rehab’ Site”, and what they have also labelled the main Ballarat Base Hospital site as St John of God’s. (St John of God’s should actually be the site 1 block north).

For something as crucial as a hospital, you’d think they’d get the time to get it totally accurate! My faith in our “all powerful search masters and overlords” has been shaken!

Google’s site didn’t seem particularly keen to receive submissions of corrected info unless you are a “business owner”, so I’ve emailed the Base Hospital’s webmaster to see if they can fix it. We shall see, an interesting test of Google’s responsiveness.

Well, at least I’ve made an effort at a good deed today anyway, even if some might view it as interfering. Once an information perfectionist, always an information perfectionist (pedant?) I guess

Update - February 2009: it appears Google Maps now seems to have fixed this problem. I did write to the hospital and contact a friend who worked there about it, so perhaps that did the trick!

Tags: Ballarat, Google Maps

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pds May 27th, 2008

I just found the blog version of Samel Pepys’ Diary.

Kudos to those behind it - for someone brought up to admire literature as well as geekhood, I can’t help but be impressed by the idea of reviving such an iconic work of its era in modern form.

Of course it opens the way for millions of other historical diaries to be blogialised (I’m sure some of the Roman philosophers or orators would be good subjects for a start) but Pepys seems an excellent choice. You’d like to think that transplanted to 2008 he would master the art of blogging in a trice, and even knock together a decent Wordpress theme to go with it.

Tags: digital life, literature

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