Trip around the world 2003. Part 2. Landing on a 6000 feet thick ice runway and more. Greenland.

I connect with the guide I met last year, a pleasant young guy called Lars and he gets me checked in to the airport hotel (reception desk about 50 feet from the check-in counter… they don’t come closer than this!) and I hope  that I am going to get a few hours shuteye, as feel like I have been run over. Sleep deprivation is the most effective torture. If you kept me awake until tomorrow, I’d confess to anything, I know I would. But no such luck. I have to go out to look for Musk Oxen, which roam wild here, so a quick shower and I am back downstairs and popped into a van and off we go. Road soon runs out of tarmac and we lurch along the topsoil, but the more we look, the more the Musk Oxen are not there. That’s the big trouble with wild animals – they tend to foxtrot oscar when you need them to be in one place.

So eventually I make it to bed and of course now I can’t sleep. Such is life in the fast lane. Of course, the curtains are thin and the sun is shining as strongly at 2300 at it was at 1100, so not a great night’s sleep. Next morning, after a very minimal cafeteria style airport restaurant breakfast, I take the Air Greenland flight up to Ilulissat (there may be a test on names later, so please pay attention). At the gate, I meet up with two cheerful Dutch guys who look anything but Dutch, as short and dark, who were on the flight from CPH and will be everywhere I go too and even on the same flight back to CPH at the end. Turns out that they are brothers (though no one would ever guess it) and their mother is Indian, hence the confusing non-Dutch appearance. One of them is a plane fanatic and will travel anywhere just to fly on a certain type of plane. A great collector of airline logo bits and pieces and he understands totally that it is normal for people to collect sick bags and safety cards etc. He is thrilled when I say I have some old Air Mandalay tickets at home, as he doesn’t have these in his collection. Also meet a very friendly Danish couple, both long timers with SAS, she just hitting 40 years of service. We exchange horror stories and worry about whether her son will remember to cut the hedge at home.

We fly on the Dash 7, nice old warhorse of the skies and we all make a fuss of a local woman who is travelling with her 5 day old baby. Because my Dutch friends and I  are the types of people who notice things, we can see a stowage in the cabin for ‘polar survival suits’, so we have to ask the flight attendant about them and she happily informs us that if we have to land on the ice, we shall be kept warm.

Great views of the inland ice cap and icebergs floating around in the bays – we are definitely not off Long Island here. In Ilulissat, set on the wonderfully named Disko Bay, there is a posse of guides waiting for me, including the Danish girl who bravely suffered my visit last year. On the SAS flight, I had snaffled some Danish women’s magazines and presented them to her, but she did not jump up and down as I had expected her to. 

The head of the guides was there and I spent the rest of the day with her. A lovely Danish girl called Hanne but pronounced as if there was an ‘a’ on the end. Quite besotted with Greenland, she has been coming every summer for the last six years, while on summer vacation from her veterinary college in CPH, from which she will graduate next year. Then she wants to come back here fulltime – Greenland has become her passion. It seems slightly mad when you think of how awful the winter is, severely subzero and with weeks of complete darkness.

First thing: did I want to go on the helicopter ride that most of our gang will be doing, so of course I did, thus 5 minutes after arriving in the hotel, I am on my way back to the airport. Life in the Greenlandic fast lane. There a nice crisply red-painted helicopter was waiting just for me to turn up and I had to smile sweetly at the other 6 pax and apologize for keeping them waiting, but it turned out they had waited all of 5 mins, so they were not put out. The Captain turned out to be Irish and the other heli is flown by his Danish wife. So off we buzzed and had great views of the ice flow and we landed on the ice and took our snaps and marveled at the grandeur of the dirty looking surface, which is apparently some 1500 feet thick! A smart off-white Arctic Hare came lolloping along and didn’t seem at all put out by us. We looked at him and he looked at us. Then a low-level flight back and we saw seals basking in the sun, on the ice though.

Later into town, which is very cute. Very small of course and wooden houses all painted different pastel colors, sitting on the rocks, so up and down and all over the place. There is just no soil at all, so nothing grows and the houses are bolted on to the rocks and stand on short pylons. Tiny harbor with a small freighter offloading containers. (got to bring in the g and t ingredients plus much else) while large pieces of ice just bobbed around. They have to bring enough supplies in during the summer, as from October, the place is solid ice. I was introduced to several people who all were greatly pleased to see me and a general good time was had by all. Due to the smallness of the population, everybody is either inter-related or just knows those who are not family. Quite a lot of tourist shopping but at a steep price. We have a bad combination of high Scandinavian prices to start off with and then the cost of living on an island that has to import everything. 

The mosquitoes are kamikaze and much spraying is required, but I still managed some large bumps to grow later – at least no risk of malaria. But they are a real pest and you can’t leave a window open or you will have a room full. But the best thing is that the rooms have pulldown blinds as well as curtains, so it’s the darkest place I’ve been to yet up here and for such great mercies, great thanks! (later addition, the blinds came down OK but of course there was still enough blinding light coming around the rim to light the room quite nicely thank you). I’m going to turn into a daylight sleepwalker at this rate.

I manage to meet up with the hotel manager and go over all our arrangements.  They are just not used to large groups, so details needed from me.  But that is why I am there, so no question is stupid.  The funniest thing about this hotel is that the chambermaids are … wait for … not local or Danish. They come from Thailand. Hard to imagine somewhere further removed from home. They stay a year or two, earning huge Scandinavian wages and then go home and can set up their bar in Pat Pong, Bangkok.

Next day I jump back on Air Greenland to Kangerlussuaq and wait for our big silver bird to arrive, which it manages to do to the minute. A very smart looking silver and blue 757, which normally operates for the Dallas Mavericks … just think of the money they must make if they can support them in such style! This long slim machine has only 63 seats in it, which will spoil our gang forever. 88 seats are going to seem crowded after this. Many old friends disgorge from the aircraft and I enjoy much hugging and kissing and before I know it, we are winging our way back up to Ilusissat, so we can start the fun and games in earnest.  One very cheerful frequent traveler with us, who seems to do nothing but, trusts us to take her somewhere good, yelled to the others in flight “Tim is here, we are okay”!

The hotel staff all agog to see what real breathing Amurrican mega-millionaires look like, although I had tried to persuade them that they look just like other people and don’t have two heads or anything unusual. Well, a shortage of hiking boots and perhaps more Hermes scarves and Gucci bags and sling back shoes than they are used to.

The weather is cooperating magnificently and the sun shines and the icebergs glisten. This area of Greenland produces some of the major icebergs of the northern hemisphere and these guys break off from the ice shelf and then eventually float south west and drift down the north eastern coast of Canada and the USA, mainly Newfoundland, so Janny, I’m looking at what you will see sometime soon. Would be good to paint your name on the side and you could do an iceberg watch for it.

We did a nice walkabout and sail about and had the pleasure of listening to the amazing sounds of the icefield surrendering to the forces of Mother Nature. There is enormous, vast pressure working inside the ice mass and it sounds like huge cannons going off, a very wonderful and awe-inspiring sound, like a distant battle. One group was really lucky and saw an iceberg calving, when a huge mass of ice actually parts company with the glacier and crashes down into the water and a huge wave whams out and anything in its path rocks and rolls. What a wonderful sight this is and how small we all feel. This mass of frozen water has been moving along for hundreds of years, grinding inexorably to its date with the sea and now its moment has come.

I also flew, with some brave guests, by Twin Otter and actually landed ON the icecap.  They have a very long ‘runway’, which is just flat and clean and you do go a long way along the ice, with some very gentle braking.  I did have some some surreal thoughts about a B757 doing that … Now we are standing on 6000 feet (yes 6000) of solid ice which was working its way to the water (and it is doing this at about 30 feet a day, which is positively whizzing along by local standards – I almost felt dizzy). It was really wonderful and you feel like a grain of sand (which is a kinda daft thing to feel like, seeing where you are) but I don’t think a snowflake works, though that would do better). The take off was amazingly fast.

What I have really wanted to see is an iceberg actually turning over. It happens all the time here. Basically, this mega gigantic, super-sized ice cube is worn away underneath by basic melting and erosion and therefore in the end becomes top heavy. It finally goes base over apex and it just (so I am told by those who have seen it) goes round and round, trying to find its center of gravity, so it is not just a top to bottom deal, but it keeps on revolving until it works out where the hell the top is in relationship to the bottom. I would love to see that as it must be just sensational. I realize I am writing to most of you who have never seen a mega iceberg and it is awfully hard to explain how awe inspiring they are. I would sit on a clifftop for days to see this. You always know the ones which have turned over, as they have no right angles. The original, right way up ones, are all jagged and probably dirty on the top, whereas if you are looking at an iceberg which is curved and smooth, it has turned over.

And the day after, we reversed everything and they went off to Iceland and me to Russia.  Then the fun and games of scouting really started.  I hope that you are game for it.

Trip Around the World, in many parts. 2003. It starts here. Part 1 Getting to Greenland

Just to give you a heads up on forthcoming episodes here, I am bound for Greenland, via Copenhagen, then back to CPH and on to St Petersburg. This is advance work for a new trip, which will be running right behind me. I just have to be there first and make sure all in in order and remind everyone that we expect a perfect visit. After that I am off to check out all new places, which have to be looked at really hard, in great detail, notebook in hand.  This is when I am scouting possible destinations for the Private Jet trips.  There is always a good reason for us wanting to go somewhere, but there needs to be more than just one big draw, so the more the merrier in terms of worthwhile diversions, especially if there are some things totally unique to the destination right there. You can never count on someone who lives next to some jaw-dropping sight/site to be able to see the rest of their home area  through the eyes of foreigners. Thus, I go look. And then there are the many hotels to check out, sleep in, eat their food, talk to the local inbound operator, meet the guides, look for potential problems and ask a thousand questions. It can mean long days, sometimes with people who are totally on top of things and ‘get it’ and then there are plenty of others who just don’t have a clue. This is when it is like drawing blood from a stone. And I ALWAYS check the toilets, everywhere.  I am near PhD level on international toilet inspecting. No seat or lid is left unlifted.

Coming up – Yerevan, capital of Armenia, then up to Samara, then east, very east, to Irkutsk and Petropavlovsk, both in Siberia and continuing as far east as you can go in Russia to Khabarovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula and Vladivostok, home of the Russian Far East fleet and a place of such naval sensitivity that foreigners used to be banned from even going there. From there to get home, I fly down to Seoul and back to New York.  This long trip will be broken down in to many parts, so I hope you will come for the ride and don’t run out of steam.

So, to start at the beginning (an old custom and one that still seems to work), I am up in a plane … a nice Scandinavian one, from Newark to Copenhagen. And of course, I introduced myself to Madame la Purser as I boarded and said I’m a refugee from your business and anything she could do to rescue me from seat 36C would be greatly appreciated and it actually worked.  Many of these pleas tend to fall on somewhat newly deaf ears and she did not look like the too accommodating type. Very  senior, with the snowiest of white hair, but after the door was closed, a young f/a was sent back and I am summoned up to 8G, which is of course where I think should have been all along.

Going from NY to Greenland via CPH makes zero geographical sense at all. (Vera, I know it will help if you find your atlas now and keep it out dear, as otherwise you are never going to keep up – have one of your helpers assist you. OK?). But amazingly enough there is no air service WEST from Greenland to anywhere, which is hardly surprising once you have been there, as the whole place points to Denmark with as much fervor as all Moslems face Mecca. A severe shortage of mosques here though. They could almost have built a bridge to Newfoundland and only a few disoriented Newfies in search of cod or Ikea would have ventured forth. Thus I fly 7 hours east, to spend 3 hours on the ground, so I can fly 4 hours west. I think it warrants the Guinness Book for Records for daft traveling. Only real good thing is I end up with only a two hour time change (apart from losing tonight of course)

And lose the night I shall, as the bloody SAS flight left pronto at 1710, which is way too early for the Atlantic. (and they started to board a 60% full flight 50 minutes before departure). It will only be just after midnight NY time when we glide on to the concrete at Kastrup Airport and then I sit until 0315 NY time, which will be hell, as most of you know I am NOT a night bird. I usually find a reviving Tuborg or similar helps, as by that time you are dehydrated, even if you have drunk copious quantities of water in flight but are in a generally discombobulated  state. This reviving beer will set the personal economy back a fair old sum I can tell you. Welcome to hi-rent Scandinavia and airport prices – a bad combo.

Re losing the night … this being High Summer (I left June 22) we are going to have a curious light night as of course we are tracking severely NNE and thus it will never get anything like dark. I think l have seen (if that is the right word) my last dark night for some time. Kind of unusual to fly the Atlantic at night and NOT have a night of any kind. And to rub salt further into the wound, the flying map thingy on the wall screen shows us now south of where I shall eventually end up tomorrow.

Anyway SK Biz dinner was frankly nothing to get excited about. They produce a fancy looking menu and separate wine list that comes within millimetres of taking itself off, though not quite up to the great lush prose TWA menus of the early 70’s with their “Morning picked, dew fresh, sun kissed ….peas”, which to quote Basil Fawlty were ‘fresh when they were frozen”. Anyway, much OTT hyperbole here and I wonder who the hell do they think they are kidding? Mainly themselves.

Otherwise their classical music channel is fine … three warhorses. which is what plane pax want. We are NOT into the moment to hear experimental music or song cycles recently unearthed from Norse graves. Give us what we know and like and we can lie back in a semi- comatose state and enjoy. UA drives me mad as they think we don’t have an attention span of more than 6 mins and play many bits of things and spend half the time wittering on about them too.

We finally arrive in CPH dead on time and I get myself checked in for Greenlandair and there is their nice new A330 waiting, in their spiffy new colors too. They are now called Air Greenland, so what color do you think the plane should be? Hands up those who said British Post Box RED. It is totally painted all over; you could not lose this one in a crowd anywhere! And even on a Monday morning, it is packed to the rafters. Don’t think Ms Greenland will ever win Ms World as the passengers are a rather scruffy looking short-arsed gang. The 12-20 year old girls are all into the low slung jeans with the bare midriff look, which is all well and fine if your midriff is smaller than your jeans. but this lot are somewhat padded (I suppose could almost be blubber?) and it then immediately becomes seriously less than pretty. Metal adornments are de rigueur and one of them looks like she was the victim of a deranged staple gun attack.

Sadly none of the crew I met last year is here and this is a  much more mature group, but they sure smile a lot. They are all Danes, based in CPH and all they fly is this route, nothing else. And in the four hours 10 mins it took to bring me half way back to where I started, they never stopped being out and about in the cabin. Rather a dreadful “brunch’ meal (due to the four hours time difference, we were sked out at 0910 and in the other end at 0940, so neither one thing or the other). And yes Vera, those really are the times, I did not invent them. Much encouragement for imbibing alcohol (a Greenlandic way of life) and the smokers, of which there are many, must have been vibrating from lack of nicotine. When we get off in the sunshine and enter the terminal, the place is practically pea soup thick with smoke. 

We are in somewhere called Kangerlussuaq and of course, may be better known to you by its former name, Sondre Stromfijord.  Are you still with me?  It’s claim to fame is that it is perfectly geographically located right on the ‘over the pole’ sort of route from Northern Europe to the Middle and West of the USA and Canada.  Like Keflavik, in Iceland, and Shannon in Ireland, they were used to the aircraft of 20 years ago dropping in, sucking up a new load of fuel and off they went. Greenland is the country with unpronounceable names and also some of the longest words ever created.  I gazed at them in the in-flight magazine … some had more than twenty five letters.

Okay … you get a break here… there is an awful lot more to come… just wait until first Nellie and then all Mother Russia embraces me.

Hong Kong to Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia, with a slight snafu in Beijing Airport.

Here I sit in Beijing airport and I’ve been having fun and games with my dear friends, the Chinese.

Flew up here happily on the very efficient Dragonair from Hong Kong. When checking in, the poor girl was so befuddled by the fact that I wanted my bag not to reside in Beijing but for it to continue unhindered to Ulaan Baatar, the capital of Mongolia and what with it being grossly overweight to boot, she forgot to observe that I did not have a visa to transit thru China. In all honestly, even I did not realize that the book says I need this, just for the thrill of landing on Chinese soil. I had my nice Mongolian visa for getting in there and in reality, in one of my other passports, I have a double entry Chinese visa, which is sked for use later on, so I did not want to blow it on a rotten little transit.

So I gets off the plane, in the bleak ever-present winter greyness of Beijing Airport (it really does make u feel depressed from the moment you land) and I bounce off an Air China girl and I say which way to Ulaan Bataar and she sweetly says I have to go through immigration and re-check in upstairs – oh no, says me – me no go immigration, me go Mongolia. She says you go immigration and I say I don’t. She wins. I go to immigration – great search looking through my passport for a Chinese visa … where it is ? me no having … crisis. Dragonair girl summoned – where is my visa (it was starting to get circular already and I expected many others to arrive to start with the same question). Dragonair first suggestion was that I return to HK and obtain. Oh NO says me – I go Mongolia. After much conversing in corners and looking at my ticket (with many other strange flights and destinations coming up and the passport being much scrutinized), I was informed that I would be fined the equivalent of USD300 … now look here says I – not my fault – Dragonair girl starting to get pushy but I can push back …. informed her that if they had spotted this in HK, that was different, but they hadn’t and therefore the onus is on them. By brazening them down, Dragonair now may be paying. Dragonair girl not happy.

I had a nice chat with the immigration guy, who spoke good English, while all this happening and I should  think that had I been alone in a room with him, I cudda donated $50 to his personal inheritance and the whole thing wudda been solved. Then a whole new immigration shift turned up, it being 12 noon. I said l supposed they had started at 0500 or the like and he laughed, saying they had started at 1200 noon YESTERDAY – a 24 HOUR shift !!! But we get 3 days off he said – I said I’d need it. Then he confessed that they have a whole dormitory out the back, where they kip all night, so I suppose it’s not all that bad. Thought u should know this in case u planning a career change to Chinese Immigration and they forget to tell you at the interview.

Anyway, with a few hours to kill, I had a terrible, just TERRIBLE sandwich in the coffee shop – described as ham and cheese, it turned out to be white bread, possibly dipped in a weakened egg solution and hardly heated through, with a sliver of ham in the middle – with a Chinese Tsing Tao beer, the cost was $13 and a rip off. But what the hell, it’s China and they don’t improve. At least they speak English now and sometimes surprising well too. And they have built a new terminal which is a vast improvement on the old one, where you could die of hypothermia in the winter.

The Mongolian International Airlines Transport (better known as MIAT- which also stands for ” Maybe I Arrive Tomorrow”) B727 was sitting there and I stationed myself by the window to watch for the baggage loading, as I wanted to check my bag was there. Fortunately, it is a) large and b) bright red so I was more than relieved to see it almost buried under a mass of shall we say, unusual Mongolian baggage.  In flight, the flight attendants donned little frilly aprons, very much a la chinoise and offered a grim looking tray, which I thought better of but I did have a Mongolian beer and it tasted just like beer. And they have a wonderful uniform headpiece (it’s a lot more than a ‘cap’).  Traditional Mongolian theme, with upturned wing flaps and a sort of Thai temple spire in the middle … all totally unique. Anyway, we survived a 2 hours flight – over increasingly desolate, flat, bleak, godawful terrain, which slowly became increasingly snow covered and somehow even more forbidding looking. A full moon was rising to make it look a bit more spooky. Even in a heated plane, it did not look welcoming.

More to come ….

How to evacuate 1050 Brits from Tunisia, due to a war, with 6 hours notice. 1967. No cellphones, no email … just word of mouth.

It is 1967 and I am living in Tunisia, a small and very friendly country in North Africa, sandwiched between the two biggies, Algeria and Libya.  I have been there for only 6 weeks, as a Resident Representative, or ‘Rep.’ for a British tour operator.  This is the huge business of Brits going away on a ‘package holiday’. You pay one price, which covers flying you there and back, a hotel for 13 nights, full board.  The only thing you pay for is the booze and things like excursions to wherever there is, but if you want to stay on the beach and buy two Fantas a day, that is okay.

I had seen an ad. for this position, (in the The Times  (of London) no less) and thought it would be different.  I was then employed by an airline that actually served Tunis and Djerba, the island of the lotus eaters, per Odysseus from Greek mythology, so someone knew it was there. I had been to Djerba several times, as it was our bolt hole for sunbathing for two days, so just had a 10% idea of what the job might involve. I knew the locals were friendly – what more do you need?  I applied and was accepted.  I spoke enough French to communicate … how wonderful.  I will be there, to keep an eye on you, sell you excursions (for which I receive a modest mark up) and generally just be around as Big Daddy, to help/advise as needed.  You were expected to cope with whatever happened, so anything from advanced sunburn to drunks to food poisoning to marital discord to a group of 14 of the gayest guys out to a guest dying the night before he was scheduled to return home, etc etc.  All in a day’s work.

So, a week before my first guests were arriving, I was put in place.  That way I could get the lay of the land, see the four different hotels under my command, which were the whole gamut … ‘family atmosphere’ right up to Four Star.  Guess where I lived.  And in the middle of the season, it went bust too, which was a whole other story.

I ran around all over the place, trying to absorb what I could pontificate about soon and tried to get some sun, so that I looked slightly ‘local’ and not just a pale and puny Brit like all my guests. And everything was fine.  The charter flight arrived at Tunis every Monday and I met them and brought them back to the resort town of Hammamet.  50% of them belonged to me and the other half to my mate Robin, living in Sousse, further south.  We met at the airport every week and compared notes. 

In 1967, this was a far cry from how Tunisian tourism developed over the years.  These were early days of mass tourism and Hammamet was just an overgrown village, with hotels dotted along the huge bay that stretched endlessly for hundreds of kilometers. No discos, no bright lights, just a glorious sandy beach, cheap local wine and tranquility. Little did we know, we were in paradise.

But the clouds of war were massing.  And in early June, they started to thunder.  We were almost oblivious, as Tunisia was the only Arab country that recognized Israel when it was first created, so they were much out of step with the others.  Down south, on the island of Djerba, there was still an active synagogue and folks just went about their lives.   My tourists were happy on the beach (being early June it was just heating up and this is what they had paid for – 14 days of nonstop sunshine).   Nevertheless, it was 1967, no cellphones, no internet, no CNN or anything like that, just local TV and newspapers in French or Arabic; we were in a vacuum.  We virtually knew nothing – we might as well have been living on the moon.  Everything was just fine, so if someone else wanted to go to war, then let them, but just count us out.  We had la dolce vita, Tunisian-style.  Camel rides up a wadi or visits to some of the greatest Roman ruins in North Africa; El Djem, the Roman amphitheater in the middle of nowhere – bigger than the one in Rome and with no one there.  The Bardo Museum in Tunis, with its magnificent Roman mosaics, very sensibly mounted on the walls, so you could really appreciate the detail. They were stunning. Come to the camel market on Friday and buy some ceramics in Nabeul, this is what the town is known for.  For the Brits, and frankly almost anyone else, a totally different world.

This all came shudderingly to a halt late one afternoon, when I received a telex (viz, an enormously long piece of paper) which had vomited out of a machine.  It was addressed to me and one of the other reps from another company (we could never work out just why only she and me were expected to action all that they were doing).  This basically said “On the advice of the British Government, we are repatriating all British tourists in Tunisia, starting tonight”.   Whaaaaaaaa?    We were having a great time, everything was running as normal, NO problem. 

All the tour operators in the UK, of course, knew exactly how any guests they had in which hotel, where and had therefore worked out how to fill the aircraft that were coming to rescue us.   BUT .. we really didn’t need to be rescued.

I found Annie, the other rep and showed her this mile-long piece of paper.  We were young, both 24 and suddenly we were expected to find all the hundreds of visitors and round them up and the first flight would be in Tunis airport, 50 miles away in a few hours and we had to get them there.   We just looked at each other and gasped.  How were we ever going to do this?  We even thought about throwing the whole message away and denying that we had ever seen it.  But of course, we could not.

She had her guests and I had mine, between the two of us scattered over eight hotels.  And there were several other British tour operators too, with their own guests, who were also included in the numbers, but NOT in the telex.   Their reps found out about this from us.  It was daunting to say the least. The first bus to the airport needed to leave in 6 hours.   Annie and I divided up the hotels where we both had guests and I said I will do these and you do those.  Okay.  How the hell do we contact them at 4pm, especially the numbers of guests I had in this hotel and the numbers she had in that hotel, who were now going to be checking out at 9pm?  Some of them had only arrived the day before. The more we thought, the worse it got.   What about people who had hired cars and driven off somewhere – we had no clue where?  Forget them.

We went to the hotel General Managers and told them this is the situation and we need your full cooperation and they all did, without blinking. When did we need a coach ?  What time?  How many tonight and tomorrow (this was an ongoing evacuation).  Our brains were in meltdown.

In the end, Annie and I ran around hotels, at dinner time, trying to find the other reps and the guests.  This was the one moment to find the maximum numbers.  Just remember now, in 2020, this was 1967 … not a cellphone in sight. We were closer to semaphore flags, if anyone alive now knows what they are.

I stood on tables in dining rooms and wished I knew how to do a two-fingered dog whistle.  Listen up Brits, you are going home and I am going to read out a list of names and YOU need to be in the lobby at 10pm… many of you will be leaving tomorrow, but first off, I need the following …..   Result, mass chaos by everyone who was NOT being evacuated.   There were hotel guests from many European countries, mainly Germany, France and Italy, who immediately felt that their governments had abandoned them. But I had three more hotels to rush to and break the news.  I took a taxi and told the driver I would pay him 10 times the fare if he sat there and waited for me.  It was only way of getting around, as the hotels were not all next door to each other.

The great thing was the total discipline of the Brits.  This was the generation which had been brought up during WW11 and knew when the chips were down, we follow orders.  Not one of them complained.  One man came to me and said the last time he was evacuated was from France, where he stood up to his neck in water at Dunkirk for eight hours.  I recruited him immediately as a helper.  But the Germans, Italians and French now lost it.  People ran off to their rooms and came back, brandishing wads of money … how much for a seat on your plane ?   Sorry, we are sold out.  The bids kept increasing.  It was very surreal.

I then shot around three more hotels and repeat my spiel …. “On the advice of the British Government….” while the time was getting shorter.  The Italians everywhere were in best Italian meltdown. Tearful women certain they would never see their bambini again. Could they come on the coach to the airport?  How much?  No.

At 10pm, in the end, we set off with several coaches from different hotels for Tunis Airport.  I am not sure just HOW we got them processed but they were.  They all had valueless charter tickets for dates in the future, but it did not matter and amazingly Tunisair, as the handling agent, went along with the flow.   We dispatched 130 guests on a Laker Airways Britannia that night and would be back four more times tomorrow.   And most bizarrely, I was told that I had a seat on the last flight, at midnight tomorrow, as I had ‘to report on the situation’.   It didn’t exactly say to whom I would report .. perhaps 10 Downing St?  

We did it over and over again next day, in scenes of even more chaos. I didn’t know there were Russians and Turks there and saw many wads of currencies I had never heard of, but the story was the same, in best airline reservations-speak, which I spoke fluently, “Waitlist closed” .. I was suddenly Henry V at Agincourt with my Brit troops. I just needed a sword.

I got home, to Coulsdon, Surrey, at 6am three days later, having been running virtually nonstop. This much to the surprise of an unflappable mother “Hello dear, I didn’t know you were coming … are you hungry ?”   Thank goodness for a WW11 mother.

I reported to my office and practically yelled at them, as an employee of about two months.  We were FINE until you all got cold feet.   And 10 days later I went back and took up from where I left off.   As I had few guests to begin with, I developed a good tan.

New York to Hong Kong. 2000. The final leg from Shiraz and I ask a confusing question.

In Shiraz Airport, there are good places to sit and type, so you can go to the restaurant and order the ever present cup (or rather glass) of chai and sit at a table by the window and therefore watch to see if your plane is actually going to turn up. In Iran flights often run late and of course they never like to tell you when you check in, so you have to either watch the ramp for the suitable plane or go and ask and then they quite blithely say “Two hours late”, with no apologies, and you just go away.

My taxi ride out here was in something that had possibly escaped from the clown act at a circus. A Chevy Corvette of distinctly ancient vintage, minus several bits that had come off over the years – who needs inside door handles, window winders, rear view mirrors ?? – all just fluff around here. The one windscreen wiper had two speeds just about terminally slow or otherwise the wiper from hell, going about 60 wipes to the minute. It took several tries to get it started and then the driver hung on to his steering wheel like grim death.

The shop in the departures area sells just about every kind of tat available and then more – I’ve always wanted to buy a 2 ft tall golden, gilded glass samovar, complete with a shiny tray and 6 gold rimmed glasses – the ideal carry on ! They have brought junk to a new level here – awful dolls in hula skirts, playing guitars, enormous boxes of dates ” energetically vitimised” they claim – hmm. You could spend ages just browsing and trying to keep a straight face, as the little man who runs the emporium is convinced you are interested in everything you pick up. Hours and hours of mindless fun!

This morning in Shraz, coinciding with our own plane’s departure, which I now orchestrate totally, there was a flight on something called Iran Asseman Airlines to Kuwait.  I took a good interest, as I am sked to fly it at the end of Jan to connect in Kuwait to Luxor. I’m now having second thoughts. The plane, a 727, looked ropey beyond belief and the crew straight out of a field. The pax are the great unwashed going to work in Kuwait, so travel with much hand baggage, mostly of the cardboard box done up with much knotted string, which is now rapidly coming undone.

Our aircraft, having departed, I had some time before my return to Tehran. At the deserted counter, I asked their check in staff the abstract question as to whether I would be able to interline my nice red suitcase through Kuwait to Luxor, when I travel at the end of January. This was quite beyond them. Firstly we had to establish that NO, I was not trying to travel today ….. why was I not travelling today ? — we have plenty of seats … well, I am traveling in 7 weeks – 7 weeks ? – then why are you here today? It was getting a bit Manuel-ish, so I had one of our agents intercede on my behalf and do it in Farsi. This resulted in them thinking that I wanted to BUY a ticket today, though just how they would have accomplished that leaves a big blank in my life. We went round and round in circles for a while. I picked up a Kuwait bag tag and asked if they had other tags to other destinations ? But we fly to Kuwait – Yes…but … we then went back to why wasn’t I going to Kuwait today ?? and where was my bag ? Then another guy turned up who had not been part of the earlier conversation and HE thought 1 was trying to check in for a flight in 7 weeks time. You had to be there to enjoy it.

I think now I may have to reroute completely – trouble is, this was the perfect connection.

Now in Tehran and all ready for that drink on Emirates. Same cruddy 737 brought me back here – crew even worse than before, esp. on safety. How about, on landing, having no one but a scruffy in flight security guard sitting on the front jump seat and to make it worse, not even wearing a seatbelt. And a heavy container full of cans of Coke out in the middle of the aisle!! The Purser guy, a vintage flyer was down the back packing up leftover food to go. Boy did I rip into him when he finally made his way forward after landing. Told him Allah wasn’t going to get us out of burning plane … grrr. The preamble on their inflight announcements always starts with ” In the name of God, the Almighty, the Compassionate …” and then goes on to say that “Inshallah” we shall reach our destination. It always injects a feeling of not 100% certainty. Imagine BA always saying that ‘we hope, God-willing’ to reach our destination. The Duty Free shop here, in the absence of booze, is heavily into … yes, carpets …… just roll up this nice 8 x 12 carpet and lug it on board. Or how about a nice Japanese rice cooker, which would feed a family of 6 for about a week …

And FINALLY, having practically kissed the Emirates crew who welcomed me on board in Tehran, I changed planes in Dubai and I’m now in hi tech Hong Kong and can be in touch with the world. So great to be back in rampant Capitalism and have access to alcohol too. Though I cud do without the excess of Yule around here … it’s everybloodywhere ……. Santas, Angels, the lot. But it will NEVER make we want to live in Iran!  

Tim

New York to Hong Kong 2000. Part 3. Iran … a problem.

Now about to leave Shiraz. Such a difficult time we have had already. In a nutshell, we had a pax die in Esfahan! Just what you need in country without an American Embassy. She was a 77 years old woman, traveling with another – rather frail looking and both of them probably should never have come, as they were tired and grumpy from day one. I managed to escape the whole drama by having left Esfahan the night before, to be in Shiraz the following morning for their arrival. The woman had been feeling unwell that day and not gone on tour – the MD had looked at her and found her dehydrated but OK otherwise. Later she contacted him and admitted that she had some blood in her urine for a few days and he whisked her off to hospital, where she just went downhill rapidly and died at 5am, basically of massive internal bleeding. We found out from the friend that the woman had undergone some large scale internal surgery, at Stanford of course, a few weeks before and should never have been rushing off on a trip like this. The doctor said that even if she had been in the US, it would have been impossible to save her.

Calls were made to the insurance agents in the US and they actually had an agent in Esfahan (amazing) and they got in on the act. along with the Swiss Embassy in Tehran which represent US interests. And thank goodness for Swiss efficiency.  They probably had a manual for “Dead American’ and swang in to action, like a proper Swiss watch. Of course, all this was happening 3 hours before everyone was leaving, so it was difficult, to say the least. The traveling companion is half way home as I write and being hotly (or hopefully, coolly) followed by her friend. Our agents here (selected by TVG) were just fantastic and spooled up wonderfully well. They had everything under control immediately and we owe them a great debt of gratitude.

Apart from that drama, all went well! The weather behaved this time so the sightseeing was good. Persepolis is the reason that any foreigner comes here and it does not disappoint. Wonderfully out in the middle of nowhere, the site is vast, so it never has that ‘invaded’ feeling of other major tourist destinations.  It dates right back to c550BC and has some of the most enormous stone pillars, around 15 of them, which give you an idea of just how vast the buildings must have been. The bas reliefs are just amazing in the their detail.

Driving here is like nowhere else I know. 2 lane highways become 3 at a flash and 3 can become 4 just as easily. Everyone is king of the road and somehow, they all just circulate around each other with balletic ease and you see few accidents. It is considered totally normal to change lane by cutting across one or two to another and of course only the nerds indicate. The rule of the right is ruthlessly in force, so ancient bangers lurch out into busy traffic and no one minds at all. After a while, it all becomes normal but the mind boggles if an Iranian was to get off a flight from Tehran in London and hire a car at LHR – he wouldn’t go far!

Our group found that the Iranians, at street level, are just as friendly as anyone anywhere in the world and they were quite blown away by it all. Some of them, apparently, had been expecting to be stoned.  Despite the wall posters in Tehran, if an Iranian asks you where you come from and you reply ‘the USA’, they respond with the standard ‘You are welcome here’. Stanford does produce a better level of interest and knowledge and they all come to the lectures and sit up and ask sensible questions (so I am told – I miss  most of the lectures…too busy checking out the dining room etc etc). Will be good to get on Emirates tonight and have a DRINK – we sure could have done with one (or more).

New York to Hong Kong – 2000. Part 2. Iran

Back on Turkish Airlines again for a 3 hour hop to Tehran. A B737 with a cheerful younger crew and only about 50% load, so no problem. We all had our last chance of a drink (good Turkish raki and then red wine) before the double whammy drought of Iran and Ramadan together. This could be really bad, as each is a downer, but put together … we shall see. The Iranians can be a pretty heavy- going group, so this may be a somewhat uphill visit. As foreign airlines seem to be banned from landing here in daylight, we arrived at the grim hour of 02:30, but the airport was of course hopping. The ultra-dour immigration female, in her regulation chardor, did not smile or even speak once – Welcome to Iran.

I was met by one of the guides we had last time, a very cheerful man named Ali and we did the regulation three cheek kisses and real lips on cheek stuff, not in the air. I know so many guides here, who of course are all men. I’m going to get a lot of this. Men will kiss the cheeks of other men who are friends or relatives each time they meet and sometimes also when they part. As they always have strong stubbly faces, I may need Bandaids in the end. As Ali had an airport pass to come in to customs, we sat and had the regulation glass of tea while waiting for the bags to come up. You can drown in glasses of chai here. Someone had obviously had a go at trying to rework the combination lock on my suitcase, as it was not at what I deliberately set it to before I checked in. They would never be able to crack it with two locks, as it is 3 digits of my phone number on one side and the next three on the other, thus very uncoordinated numbers. It’s a great way to know if someone tried to take a look. Bloody nerve.

Then the drive through the deserted and very dark night time streets, so I cannot see if some of the buildings still have the huge signs crying out ‘Death to America’.  We arrive at the somewhat less than wonderful Laleh Hotel. This had been an Intercontinental in the good old days (or 1 suppose, now the bad old days, depending on your inclination). It is a pale shadow of its former Intercon. grandeur, for sure. Threadbare carpets and a general air of dusty dilapidation and very dimly lit, which increases the general gloom. The mature counter staff all have a strong air of quiet resignation to the will of Allah, who has provided them with employment that means standing around all night pretending they are having a good time. One actually remembered me, which makes me wonder why, but I suppose this is my 4th or poss 5th visit, so I should sign up for the frequent stayer’s club. I was in bed by 04:00, so I could be woken by the traffic at 07:30. Iranians drive with one hand on the wheel and the other on the horn. Managed to ignore it for a while and slept a little more, but finally got up. Of course, too late for infidel’s daylight breakfast (the locals had theirs while still dark) and it is now coming up to midday and the restaurant is firmly closed. I have become temporarily Ramadanic (if such a word exists) and thanks to the bottle of water in my room. I shall survive until tonight. I do have a box of loukum if all else fails, but am keeping that for Mongolia to help cheer us all up in the coolth there.

I am being collected by the boss-lady from our agents here later and we shall take the one hour flight down to Isfahan, where hopefully it will not be raining (as it is here, quite hard, hence my being stuck inside writing, rather than being outside walking around). I brought my laptop down to the lobby and plugged it into a wall socket, so I can type and survey the scene. Lobby is huge, with carpet emporia all around, which is kind of ironic, due to the terrible state of the floor coverings. Many sofas and quite comfy seats, so there is a steady progression of people coming past or sitting down chatting, all keeping a shifty eye on the foreigner typing away. OH NO, it’s midday and they are playing the call to prayer over the hotel loudspeaker system. There is no escape.

Later on, in Esfahan. My good friend Parvenah, the boss-lady, arrived at the hotel and along with her enormous handbag, we were squeezed in to a very small car.  She is one of those women who carried an extra large handbag, from which a never-ending amount of ‘things’ can be produced.  It almost became a challenge to ask if she had something bizarre and see what happens.  Need a calculator or box of paper clips or a stapler – les voila. Patent medicines, printed programs, a spare pair of slippers .. all there.  She only smelled a rat when I asked if she had a pane of glass. She thinks I am funny.

We survived our quick hop from Tehran on a dilapidated Iran Air B737. Just an awful looking crew, in true Iranian fashion -if any UA f/a turned up looking as rough as them, they would be sent home. Weather here was perfect for our arrival but in the last 24 hours has gone into a slow decline and it’s now pouring. We have another 36 hours before the arrival of our aircraft and then it had better be good – much inshallering all around on this case.

We have had several very SLOW meetings with the hotel. Pavenah, with whom I am now on first name terms and for whom I brought a nice big box of tea from a Harrods shop in Istanbul airport, takes no prisoners and various hotel depts have awaited our pleasure. She is early 50’s, dyed light hair, which you see when her big headscarf pulls back, which happens to all of them all of the time and looks disarmingly over the top of her glasses. She has a ‘mother’ and I know to ask after her wellbeing and often receive more information than I needed. Having said all that, we get on like a house on fire. She is a rampant anglophile, with a sister married to a Brit living outside London, so goes there frequently, so I am in already, but she has a good SOH (probably an advanced one by local standards) and has already told me that she thinks very highly of TCS and me in particular – seems I asked fewer daft questions when I came to scout Iran about 5 years ago, than other outfits she handles.

The sad thing is that as I always miss the posh second night HUGE caviar dinner in Esfahan, as I am flying to Shiraz to make sure all will be well there next day, before they arrive in our aircraft.  But the problem is resolved. Parvenah travels on our aircraft in the morning and brings me about half a pound of the most delicious Beluga I have ever eaten … worth a FORTUNE in Fortnum and Mason. It’s a kind of wonderful problem to have a mound of caviar, which really just needs to be eaten.  (One year this happened and I departed pronto from Shiraz to Singapore, for a quick night at Raffles there. The then Front Desk Manager, Richard Yap, a Malaysian, who was going fast up the hotel management business chain, always fixed me a room and I knew he loved caviar. I lugged the caviar in its tupperware from Shiraz to Dubai to Singapore, with the help of Emirates crews, who put it in the fridge on the aircraft.  ‘How long do you need?’ Richard’s his only question when I arrived.  ‘10 minutes’ I said and promptly, 10 mins later, there was Richard and a very posh butler with a wheeled cart.  Hot blinis, with their own little heater, lemons, sieved egg yolks and whites, a bottle of frozen vodka.  We needed nothing else and just stuffed ourselves.  20 years later, neither he nor I have ever forgotten our caviar orgy.)

All meetings are always accompanied by several glasses of tea. I have rechristened Iran Chai-ran, which they seemed to think most original and amusing. I was totally ravenous last night as it had been 21 hours since food last passed my lips (and that was a TK dinner, so that hardly counted either). I did manage to get out here for a while during the day and walk the streets – no one gives you a second glance. Shops are still grouped together by what they sell, so acres of shoes, followed by clothes, followed by gold (being much examined by ladies in full black chardors). Did a stop in an ‘antique’ shop – run by a little Jewish guy, with his elderly father propped up in a kind of day bed behind the counter.  Amazingly there is still a Jewish population here. All sorts of terrible junk, but did find a nice pottery oil jug that will look good chez moi. The set up was just very Dickensian.

Today we have had both breakfast in daylight and also lunch – I made polite enquiries about all these flagrant breaches of the Ramadan rules, but it seems that there is a legal Koranic out, insomuch that if you are travelling (and this means not many k’s from your home) then the rules are officially bent. It doesn’t seem to matter that we are ensconced here for a few days; we are still technically on the move and the mighty Koran itself gives the OK. When you think that that was written in the days of donkeys and camels, it doesn’t make sense now, but anyway it’s OK not to starve.

The other guides have arrived today from Tehran.  A big, cheerful reunion and I have never been kissed by several men in such fast succession. In Syria, just so that you know, it is also three kisses, the same, and there you do lots of little sucking noise kisses on the third and last one.   Don’t even ask.

(Later addition – I think 1 have been kissed 60 times – 10 men I know multiplied by 3 kisses on arrival and 3 on dep!). Next problem is that they are all heavily into sweet, gluey colognes, so when you get the kisses in the morning, you end up smelling wildly perfumed. Meanwhile the women you do not even touch, no handshakes, nuttin, which is so unusual for us.  It’s the women who run the show and are very ballsy too, so please don’t think just because they are covered up that they have no power.  They DO.

From New York to Hong Kong, with several countries in between. 2000.

Dear Readers. 

So here I sit, way down at the back of a Turkish Airlines A340. My originally allocated seat had a very low number, in fact the front bulkhead, which I looked at when I left the a/c and there had been an infant there too, so a lucky escape. I suggested to my new best friend Anita (from Korean Air, but she was Hispanic – are you still with me ? Korean does Turkish Airlines check in at JFK and I have a Korean bag tag to prove it), so I suggested that I might be better off to move back and within seconds she had advised that the flight was barely 50% full and I was welcome to go to the rear, which was A GOOD DEAL I would have 4 seats to myself. And being an A340, the back is still much quieter than the equivalent on a B747.

I bounced off the Lufthansa lounge in case my best mate Helga was there, but remembered that she has had Fri and Sat off since before Hitler first asked for an upgrade. Without her, I knew there was no hope of being asked in for some Apfelsaft or stronger, so I bowed out.

Turkish Airlines started to board the flight a cool 50 mins before departure, which given the load, seemed a trifle early and they all shot on pronto, so at departure time -30, I think I was the only person left outside the aircraft. It seems to be a totally Turkish load of pax, so good to be the odd man out. They travel VERY heavy of course. The check in had looked more like the loading dock at Macy’s and I had my friend Anita laughing when I apologised for only having one bag. The crew is quite senior – Madame la Purser has MANY MILES behind her and a face full of heavy pancake makeup (almost Aunt Jemima thick) to prove it.  She has patrolled throughout the cabin a couple of times to make sure we are all behaving ourselves. I wouldn’t like to be on the wrong side of her.

The meal was about what you would expect. They may be in an interchange program with Ansett, as I think it was a modified version of AN Rubber Chicken No.3, sans everything that the Oz’s may have put in to make it interesting. The chix may have been escapees from Chicken Run, as mine had certainly done a lot of running and then had fallen foul of an oriental cleaver, which had managed to dismember it in a way unknown to westerners. You really do have travel on the local carriers to appreciate the finer points of life. Everyone within my eye parameters was scoffing it down with glee.  Best thing to drink on Turkish is Sour Cherry Juice… sounds bizarre but it is totally delicious.

My original plan had been to go on Austrian Airlines via Vienna, but they did a sked change which gave me a much longer than necessary wait there (and having checked out their lounge last week, going the other way), it’s not worth the effort, unless you remember to take a barf bag off the a/c. Then you can fill it with toothsome Mozart Chocolates from the big bowl there. ‘Take as many as you want’ they trilled, when I politely asked.

Now morning – my little blue pill did the trick for laying me out (and I’m still woozy to prove it). Good thing I just go to the hotel and the rest of the day is mine, so weather permitting, I shall stroll the town and see what is what.

Huge new terminal building on arrival in Istanbul.  Acres of polished marble, with the obligatory sweepers pushing long brooms at that certain airport open spaces sweeper speed – they are the same the world over (and probably have conferences in Vegas to discuss abstract thoughts of cleaning or ’The broom – history, part one’ etc.) Anyway, I was through in a flash and to the bank to obtain some of the dreaded money. Turkish lira has gone into the even BIGGER numbers game and they just defeat me. When you receive 638,000 for just one dollar, then you are in the millions immediately and the notes have too many zeros on them, complicated by x of them with capital O’s followed by more as small o’s, so I am in permanent state of befuddlement. Rather like Yanks were in the old days in the UK, when asked for 3 pounds 2 and tuppence. I need a small person attached to me to handle finances (and if my room has a VCR, he/she can cope with that too).

Found a cheerful chappie taxi driver to bring me downtown. He had a little English and was very keen to use it. Only problem was that it was so fractured that I had a hard time in having any clue just what he was trying to say. Eventually I feigned sleep to shut him up. With one eye open, I could admire the sweeping promenade leading around the shore line. In the distance, a sea of minarets shooting skywards. They like them long and thin here. From a distance, they look like tall spears of skinny asparagus. It is Sunday morning, so as Turkey has a foot in both east and west, the place was fairly peaceful.

The Four Seasons welcomed me back with true grace and the all-smiling doorman coped with my paying the taxi and whisked me in.  There was a couple standing there who were obviously leaving the hotel and they took my vehicle.  I only got a quick glance at them, but I am having one of those ‘I should know who you are …’moments. One hour later, it was Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve.  I hope he got on better with the taxi driver’s English than I did.

Inside it’s just a small oasis of coolth. My registration card all completed and would I like a cuppa while my room was prepared?  Not much option I suppose, short of camping outside the room itself. Nice lounge, with Mozart 39th symphony for background music – what more did I need? And good coffee and little petits fours too. Hence the time to sit here and survey the scene. As the hotel is right in the middle of all the best sightseeing, it is obviously much visited by anyone walking past, thus fun to watch some of the lesser specimens, who would certainly NEVER be staying here, giving it the once-over. They come in because all the guide books tell them that it was originally a prison. The staff are permitted to let them look just so far and then out you go.  Not much evidence now of folks being locked up.  Except in a retro-step, we do have keys to our cells and are trusted with them too.

Weather is mild – a bit grey – trees bare already – perfect for sightseeing.

A bit later – have been out and taken some air. All Istanbul is also out also for a Sunday afternoon stroll, so I can always just do some locals watching.  I sit happily in a pavement café with a beer and just watch. Ramadan is about to start, so the last chance for them to be eating and drinking in daylight.  There is a posh fish restaurant, spreading out on to the pavement, which is well patronized by the bourgeoisie. You could feel the ‘let’s enjoy this while we can..’ feeling.  Fish, in Istanbul, is always good, as they have both the Black Sea just up the road and are on the entrance to the Mediterranean.

Writing later, we survived our time in 1ST very nicely. The weather did not cooperate at all, so was either drizzling or really raining and blowing the whole time. I get the feeling that it always rains for me here, so if they ever have a drought, then send for TVG and the problem will be solved. As it was the start of the trip for the Stanford mob, they filtered in from all directions and I did a couple of  transfers from the airport. They are hard to miss in their red parkas – EVERYTHING for Stanford has to be red – they are besotted with it.

It was the first day of Ramadan on our second day there, so around the area between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, they have built a temporary shanty town of eateries, which come to life once the sun has set. A couple of us went for a walkabout later to check the scene. People crouched on exceedingly low seats, gossiping and enjoying themselves no end. The system is that you don’t eat all day and come sunset, about 1700, then you have what is really a very late lunch and then you have dinner at about 2300, so this was what we were seeing. Snacked on some good chewy loukum, or Turkish Delight to you perhaps – I’ve always been addicted to that. And then suddenly there was a huge, very noisy fireworks display. Great cannon shells bursting overhead with the largest of bangs – first night of Ramadan is big. I immediately realized that our punters, asleep close by, would be imagining they were under attack and getting themselves all into a dither, so we returned pronto and next morning discovered that had indeed happened and some had called the front desk for advice. You think they wudda noticed the sparkling stuff falling prettily from the sky. 

We ran them around the city for a couple of days, which was all good.  No one got lost, which is always a mercy, especially when it comes to wandering through the souks. Turkish guides are experienced and very sensible and they have some non-guide younger types who act as the bringers up of the rear.  As we split the groups into smaller factions, so they can go off in different directions  (that is what they have paid for, not a mass herd around), it takes a lot of folks to carry this all off.  I know I could just sit on the floor of Hagia Sophia and look at the arches and decoration and be very happy for hours.

So anyway, as the travelogues used to say, it was time to say Sayonara to Istanbul and head for Tehran. And I will also leave you also.   Lots more to come from a very different world.

The Grand Hotel et des Palmes in Palermo, Sicily. A faded grande dame. 2001.

Greetings readers, from the Grand Hotel et des Palmes, in Palermo, Sicily.   It’s October and the perfect time of year for Sicily, which I like a lot, as it mostly looks like the set from a Fellini movie in the 1960’s and everything should really be in black and white.

Now THIS hotel is my kind of place, as it’s large in scale and has seen better days and no one has quite owned up to, or realized that it is going downhill fairly fast. I walk through the imposing front door and bump (literally) into French actor Gerard Depardieu, who looks EXACTLY as he does in the movies. Tall, heavyset and with a face that is a mass of crags and canyons. His hair was amazingly long, so perhaps that is needed for a part. He didn’t seem at all impressed to see me, but I shall let that pass.

I quote from the hotel brochure: “Originally the home of the Ingham-Withaker (sic) family (and who were they ??? – I shall have to find out, as they sure don’t sound local and why did they build a big house on the main drag of Palermo to look like a hotel?), the G H et des P has been welcoming visitors since 1874.” And on a mighty Victorian scale too. Imposing lobby, gilded mirrors, potted palms and a mini Basil Fawlty on the desk, definitely into keeping out the riff raft. He surveyed his territory with a very practiced air and I should think half the staff thinks he is God and the other just wish he would retire.  One of those places with pigeon holes behind the imposing and highly polished front desk and the hook for your key, on a proper ring with a small tassel.  I am not in Ving-card land here for sure.  My reservation (“For just one night”?) is found and I produce my passport and credit card, before he has to lower himself to ask for it.

A perfect creaking elevator, with proper rickety doors.  I was expecting an old fashioned elevator operator, but perhaps he had gone to lunch. My room, overlooking a small garden, which is good as the traffic noise out front is loud, is huge, high ceilinged and rather bare – I don’t think Mrs Ingham-Withaker would have found it too cosy. A very basic and really rather threadbare carpet and a couple of floral wing chairs, which when I first sat down to type in seemed to sink almost to floor level, the springs having seen better days (or carried heavier loads). A proper old white-tiled bathroom too, with a great deep Victorian tub, which invited much wallowing later and the largest taps I have ever seen.  They were offset by the smallest piece of soap I have ever seen.

But the piece de resistance is the dining room. They don’t come too much like this anymore, or the geriatric staff. Having been up and about since 04:30 this morning and been to Catania airport, way down in the south east corner of the island and put my people on their plane and then taken an almost 3 hours scenic bus ride across the island, (fantastic small villages straight out of The Godfather) and fueled with not much more than a cup of coffee at 0445, I was starving, but had to wait for the dining room to open at 12:30.

I was greeted by a small man, with the muttering vice (whom I discovered soon, kept himself amused by talking quite loudly to himself). The room is on a lofty, heroic scale with many tables of various permutations seats-wise and what look like totally faux doric columns in the middle and many mirrors. Stiffly starched white table cloths of course and ditto napkins, done in the Bishop’s Mitre fold.  You didn’t think I would know that, did you?

I am the only one there and the two waiters descend upon me. It is ying and yang.  One is short, the mutterer and the other about 6’1 tall, with a correspondingly long nose to look down upon his mate. Their heads are nearly two feet apart when they stand next to each other. And if you think this makes them look like the odd couple, they were soon joined by the Maitre d’Hotel himself and HE made the short one look tall.  It was beginning to look like an act in a circus.  He was also quite put out that their one and only client had managed to sneak in when his back was turned, so he had to come over and inspect me and make sure I had the right menu and ensure that I understood what they had.  As the menu was in both Italian and English, it had not been too much of a problem. He then had to pick up the copy of my order, which had been written down by the short waiter and ensure that all had been correctly noted. This was the epitome of The Fussy Little Man.

Fortunately I had had the foresight to bring a book, as the longuers were indeed expected, but I sneaked peeks at the staff to keep myself entertained. The taller of the shorts, busily talking to himself, had his bum perched slightly on a table. The maitre d’ fussed a lot over his station, rearranging small piles of paper and old bills and looked like he may be in danger of being murdered by the other two, just for being such a pedantic person. Polonius sprang to mind, played by Richard Briers. The tall one stood cave by the kitchen door and stared out into space. Sometimes he lurched across the room and realigned a knife that was slightly out of true (perhaps from his height he had a better overview ?) and then the maître d’ went over and made sure it was done properly. I began to feel like I was an extra in a Pinter play, with me as some form of comic relief, as these three were definitely going in circles around each other. Godot should have come through the door. And I was their only victim. My every move was monitored. Once the water glass was sipped from twice, then someone filled it – exactly as in India, where I think if you sat with your mouth open, they would probably draw up a chair and feed you, nursery fashion.

Anyway, my food arrived, on rather beaten up looking metal platters, everything much garnished, that then had to be decanted on to a plate and it wasn’t very special, but at the same time it fitted the grand surroundings of an establishment a bit gone to seed.   I completed my meal, still as the only diner and was escorted out, with the two waiters holding open the large doors and bowing low.

In the afternoon, I walked the town, which I liked, inspecting both churches and mosques and going off down small side streets, some of which just took me round in circles.  The hotel was so old fashioned that there was a book of matches in the room, with their name and address on.  This is all you need if you get lost and the only person you can see turns out to speak another language.

And that’s where it all ended.