I’m here for a week and I love the place – it’s what all hostels should be. So pleased I picked it on Booking.com many months ago. After you check in at reception a person shows you around and explains the way things work; there’s a no-shoes-policy in the living areas, they give you fresh white linen, the mattresses are new, each bed has two plug sockets and a funky working light with an LED bulb, in the kitchen there’s a bank of fridges, every room has been allocated it’s own fridge. Access is electronic keypad entry and the outside door code changes everyday. It’s all so well organised, all the fittings are quality, nothing has been done on the cheap, maintenance people along with cleaning staff are on site, and standards are kept high. There are no signs everywhere – the decorative items are carefully chosen and I’d say quite expensive. The central courtyard has live music some nights and a restaurant does subsidised meals for $15. I’ve had the same traditional Swedish meatballs for three nights running now.
The staff are helpful and enthusiastic, one of them helped me decide that I should fly from Stockholm to Amsterdam. I was planning to go overland by rail but the costs and the number of changes and connections I’d have to make would be a mission. I thought there would be just one train all the way – but no, and it’s so much cheaper so I’ve booked the flight now. The wifi here is the fastest I’ve ever used and I base this on the speed I can upload images . . woosh!
The City Backpackers Hostel Upplandsgatan 2a, 111 23 Stockholm, Sweden is NZ$403 for 7 nights, that’s $57 a night plus a single additional cost for linen, and breakfasts are 55 Krona NZ$8.80. This hostel is one of a chain of hostels around Europe called Europe’s Famous Hostels and I wish I’d booked the same in Amsterdam and Vienna.
This little example tells you a lot, I put some food in my fridge, (the visit to the local supermarket was an adventure, but that’s another story), and I put the food in the fridge, next morning there were little stickers on my items saying ‘Please label’, meaning, with my name and departure date – now, that’s efficiency, and so polite. There’s also a Free Fridge, plus there’s free pasta if you’re really broke and need a meal – very civilised.
Just a little touch, where you leave your shoes in the alcove area there’s a sign saying, ‘If you love your shoes, take them to your room.‘ Which is so much more pleaseant than the alternative, other places might have a sign in the negitive, eg: ‘Theives operate in this bulding, leave shoes here at your own risk.’ The difference is what makes this place special – everything has been thought about – and that’s good design.
And tomorrow . . I’m going to the design museum.
The main problem is uploading images of course. I have a couple of hours before a flight to Stockholm here in Edinburgh. It’s an end of quaint country pubs and friendly locals with heavy accents to a modern metropolis.
Before I enter Scandinavia I must post a couple of images from my walks around the stone circles and ancient sites of Orkney. It’s not often I say to a bus driver, ‘Can you drop me off at the turnoff for the Stones of Stenness, please.’
I went on an official guided tour of the island that I had booked from New Zealand which included the World Heritage site of Scara Brae. Clive was the most boring person you could ever meet. The droned on like a newsreader doing the marine forecast, he didn’t have any personality and was painfully pedantic. For example, he stopped the van and spent 10 minutes explaining the military details of a British ship that was torpedoed in Scarpa Bayin WW2 . I have an interest in military history to some degree but the exact timing of the 3rd tordedo was starting to get to me. I guess some people are fascinated by this stuff, but not my group. I found the volunteer guides who walk around the sites were much more interesting and personable – these are representatives from Heritage Scotland.
I’ve been pretty lucky finding places to play some songs. I can Google Open Mics Nights, ask in a music store, spot a sign outside a bar, or like on the Islands of Orkney, just start chatting to people on the bus.
Two days previously I had to get up at 6am in Edinburgh to catch the 8.30am train to Inverness, and after a night in a 4 bed dorm in Inverness I rose at 5.30am to catch the 7am train to Thurso at the northern tip of Scotland. There didn’t seem to be a bus connection between Thurso and the ferry terminal at Scrabster so three of us decided to get a taxi to travel the 5 miles. The terminal was cold and had no facilities and the incoming ferry was late due to high seas. Three hours later we were in the warmth and comfort of a large NorthLink ferry to Stromness on Orkney Mainland. Arriving at 6pm there was a vicious northerly blowing and it was raining and we had to wait again in a bus shelter for the next bus. By the time I crossed the island to Kirkwall and checked into my room I was pretty worn out. I slept for an hour and headed to The Reel with my guitar to play with the Orkney locals and I was so pleased to play one of my songs.
It’s an odd feeling sitting in a cafe looking out on Haddington Place in Central Edinburgh writing about Brixton because it’s feels so far away now. The crowds, the heat, the diversity, and so many people just milling about and hanging out on the streets. It was so hot you’d perspire just walking down the street – I like this warmth, actually. In Brixton it’s like being in another country – and I know there are racial problems but the more amazing thing is the tolerance and acceptance, at least on a surface level.
It’s been said before but it needs to be said again, getting to Heathrow is cheap, fast and reliable on the Underground and I wish Auckland Council and the Government had the collective vision to stop faffing around build a smart new fast train link from Auckland Airport to Britomart – it’s essential in big any city. Instead, we’re always stuck in traffic or crawling along with trucks around industrial areas of South Auckland – it’s pathetic. I have heard a rumour that a big part of the problem is that the trucking companies are big funders of the National Party and believe rail would undermine their dominance in the transport business. This is selfish thinking and a Governmnet or Council needs to rise above private business interests and have the guts to serve the needs of everyone, because so many people are travelling by air to and from New Zealand and they want to get to the airport on time without having to worry whether the motorway will be blocked, again. Terminal 5 at Heathrow is state-of-the-art terminal design. There is nothing to confuse anyone – plain signage, no advertising, no clutter, clear instructions and directions, and a layout that leads you where you need to go – brilliant design. The other airport I found good was Frankfurt which is beyond enormous – I must have walked 2 km in a big curve to contect between my flights. I have been trying to load more images to this post all morning but the wifi is very slow here at the hostel and I really need to get out and about now so will add more pics later. Also, sorry about the bad grammar, poor sentance contaruction and random syntax, was rushing, (Anne, please, I need you to proof read and sub edit). 
For about six years I lived in a tiny flat 50 metres from Portobello Road in Notting Hill. It was the upper floor flat of an Edwardian building on Colville Terrace and the massive Saturday market was a highlight of my week, and yesterday I literally strolled down memory lane. Portobello Market was always a good place to meet new people and yesterday I had the some very interesting encounters. I was carrying a large pack because I had come directly from the Isle of Wight and wanted to find a place to stash it while I could mooch around. It was 11am and was getting up to 26º as I walked through the antique section at the upper part of the market – in so many ways it seemed the same as ever.
It was time to have something to eat so I and stopped at The Duke of Wellington, the closest pub to my old flat and once my local. They weren’t prepared to take care of my pack, so after a BLT and a coffee I continued on. I couldn’t believe my favourite crumbed German barbecued chicken was still there 20 years later. All the boutique shops had changed and many of the fruit and veg barrows had become nick-nack stalls. I continued under the Westway to Bonchurch Road where an old friend from back in the day used to lived – he may still live there, so I knocked on his door and a young woman opened it saying she’d never heard of Malcolm Jamieson but it wasn’t her flat because she was just looking after it. I left and was about to try the place next door and she opened a window and called out, ‘Are you a New Zealander?’ 
There’s a new play currently on at the National Theatre called Common about the fight in early-industrial Britain for retaining common land and yesterday in Ruskin Park I walked with Leo and saw a portrait in a pub celebrating the individuals who made it happen in the early 1800’s. Ruskin Park is in Denmark Hill near Brixton, it’s 36 acres with views back to the City – you can clearly see Big Ben and The London Eye. There are more parks in South London because South London developed later than the north side of the river and there was still time, back in those days, to establish them – and I feel New Zealand is now at that point. Leo, who I’m staying with, says it’s the one thing he finds little a depressing about New Zealand, everyone seems to is so obsessed with property prices. This must, in my opinion, have some effect on the provision for public space. Most of the green areas around where I live are sports grounds – wouldn’t it be good if we turned them back to parks?
Entrance is £16 and includes a headset and a very hi tech visual hand unit about the size of an iPhone 7 with videos and information that’s really easy to use. I normally hate these fiddley things with a commentary but some clever tech team has designed something quite amazing because you choose the bits you want to hear and there’s short videos.
I used my binoculars and learned the story of each panel in the main dome. Paul’s journey to Christianity and his spreading of the word. I have looked closely at a few ancient religious story panels recently and realise the faith was primarily based on a few clever conjuring tricks; getting bitten by a snake and not dying, making someone instantly blind, and curing a cripple (‘look he’s walking!’) is all the proof you need. One of the panels in the great dome shows Paul burning the books of other pagan belief structures of the time – way to go. Religious mythology aside you can’t help but be completely blown away by the architecture, art and music it produced – and I speak as a person who studied and still enjoys listening to Palestrina plainsong, that’s the spooky male-choir music they use all the way through movies like The DaVinci Code.
We sat in a place called Brixton Box, a cluster of containers around a court yard that’s definitely the hang out for the new young Brixton arrivées – arty and edgy, and a bit rough and ready. Brixton is still the same, lots of West Indian people 
playing reggae, it’s still grubby, but lovely.
The guy behind the counter said, ‘You might like to try this’, went out to the back room and came back with a 1943 Gibson priced at US$11,000. I have never played an acoustic worth that much but today I played quite a few of expensive guitars, and yes, they all do sound different and they feel different too. My absolute favourite was a 1971 Gibson Dove with an ebony neck at US$2,700. It rang out beautifully, had plenty of bass depth and the neck felt so natural in my hand – it was perfect. Next he gave me a new Gibson L65, the neck was flatter, made for a smaller hand or a learner, but so easy to play and it sounded big and full, a real modern acoustic guitar, and only US$1,000. I visited Old Town Music on Burnside Rd where I tried a few Martins, Guilds and Taylors from $1,500 to $3,000 but none really impressed. They had a 1976 Gibson L200 (pictured), the famous acoustic Pete Townsend of The Who plays, a big jumbo body with a great thumping sound that’s ideal for stage playing when there’s a band – but at US$2,700 there was something wrong with the neck – it was a bit twisted so the action was too high at the 12th fret. One of the best guitars in the shop, to my taste, was a vintage Yamaha F30 for just US$750. I didn’t buy a guitar but I did buy a mic I’ve always needed, too pricey in New Zealand, a SM58 with a switch for US$100, and they gave me a free T’shirt.
Next it was Centaur Guitars on NE Sandy Rd and some of the finest acoustics I’ve seen and played. There is no hard-sell in these shops, they don’t hover around you, they just let you play and play – but, there is one rule, whatever you do, and there are signs up – DO NOT SING.
Oregon followed Colorado and Washington State in making the recreational use of cannabis legal and since then the cultivation of it has become big business. The ranch where I was staying is currently experimenting with the propagation of the plant and I was shown around their set up. There are many varieties with the most popular being Sativa and Indica, and it is this one that commands a higher price and the one they are focusing on. In the town of Bend in central Oregon with a population of about 80,000 there is already 14 stores exclusively selling pot. The price for the premium organic product is high, especially outside the September and October glut period when the outdoor crops are harvested. Outdoor product is known as ‘dirt-weed’: the set-up I was shown is growing indoors, a premium organic Indica sensimilla under special LEDs. The farmer I spoke to doesn’t smoke pot himself because he’s not really interested and hasn’t the time while running a busy farm with 31 horses along with his core business combining various silica and calcium powder ingredients to make the compound used to make plaster casts used in medical and dental applications – but that’s another story.
The Bent Wire Ranch has 31 horses, 3 goats, 6 dogs including a Great Dane and some chickens. They are involved in ethology; the study of animal behaviour, specifically, horses and hold regular training sessions and clinics on the property. People bring their horses and they work with them – it’s holistic and it all centres around the animal. Zeno, a trainer from France went into great detail of their methods. She says horses have riders forced on them when the horses are too young and not ready, like 3 years old and their backs can be damaged. She explained how the vertebrae in the back need to strengthen in muscle from 5 years and only ridden from the age of 7. She doesn’t accept the old myth of ‘breaking-in’ a horse saying its cruel and unproductive because the riding life of the horse is shortened. Instead, a horse needs to slowly build muscle between the vertebrae in the back. We walked around the ranch and she showed me some damaged horses. 
The Ranch is a rest home for a few older horses, the oldest is 27 years, while other horses have come because they have been too difficult for their owners. I learned more about horses from Zeno in half an hour than ever knew before – and no, I didn’t go for a ride.
I was looking for some tea and some snacks for my hike. My host has three drawers of teas in their kitchen in every combination of fruit flavours but no black Ceylon tea. With a quick mental conversion I figure the costs of everything in Fred Meyer is about a third less than NZ, but there’s nothing I really need apart from nuts, fruit and tea.
On my hike in Shelving Park reserve I followed a trail through the trees alongside a river. The air smells of pines and there’s a fine dust in the breeze, it’s spring and about 24° C but apparently it’s going to be 29° later in the week. They tell me summers are blazing hot and there’s huge dumps of snow in winter here – seems I’ve come at a good time.
The owner seems to never tire of talking about tea. I settled on Darjeeling 2nd flush, (the second batch of leaves that has more depth of flavour than the first flush). He offered me two tins so I could compare, I sniffed each tin and nodded sagely – yes, definitely the 2nd flush, please. 
One of the assistants, a woman with purple hair, delivered my order and said, having overheard my conversation, I might also like Golden Needles: a black tea from China, grown and directly imported in small batches.
He was wearing a Music Month target t-shirt. He said Portland is just the right size: big enough to have a healthy arts culture and small enough to have a sense of community. We talked about how everything seems to be organic in the food stores and Stefan said it’s now going ‘beyond organic’ people are demanding food that is also local organic. He suggested the Portland Art Museum because there is a collection of works by Rothko, who originally came from Portland, and to check out the Alberta Street Arts District – just a half hour walk away.
I came across Crossroads Music with an adaption of that picture of Robert Johnson. Inside I heard
