A Different Christmas

This year I had a very different Christmas to what I'm used to. It was about zero degrees Celsius in Edinburgh instead of the 30 degrees plus that I'm used to in Australia. I ate Christmas dinner with 7 French people (well, actually 6 French and 1 Belgian). My flatmate cooked all day and served up a feast of gastronomic delights which we savoured from 8pm till 1.30am the next morning. Lots of wine, lots of cheese, it was fabulous. But definitely a different Christmas for me, although not quite as weird as last year where I ended up eating Christmas lunch at Hooters in Interlaken, Switzerland. That was surreal.

I wonder where I will be next Christmas ...

Pergamum, Turkey, May 2005

As opposed to 'Fake Fake Watches', or would that make them genuine?

Eating Alone in Strasbourg

I was by myself in Strasbourg and thought I would splash out on a nice meal. I always feel like a bit of an idiot dining alone, but decided I wouldn't let this dissuade me from eating well. I'd only been seated for 5 minutes when another lady also dining alone sat down at the table next to mine. We struck up a conversation, and she expressed surprise at finding another sole lady diner. She said she regulary dines alone due to the travelling nature of her job, and that I was the only other lady she had ever seen eating by herself.
What is it that makes us feel stupid when eating alone in a restaurant? Is the self consciousness that we have from worrying about what others are thinking of us, and why we don't have any one to dine with? Is it just having nothing to do while waiting for your meal? Or is it more than that?
Anyway, turns out she was a fascinating lady. She was a program director for a travel company and travels Europe for six months of the year, then spends the other six months living in the Caribbean. She speaks six languages fluently and is learning a seventh. She described herself as 'happily divorced', and free to travel the world. I would love to be living her sort of lifestyle when I am her age. Thank you Katerina for making my sole dining experience so enjoyable.

Bathing Across Europe

In my recent travels I've had 3 very different experiences in public bathing establishments.
Near Lake Balaton, Hungry: An outdoor thermal heated lake with supposed healing properties. Place had the feel of a holiday resort from the 60's (think of the location from Dirty Dancing). Full of German tourists using rubber floation devices (pictured).
Hamam in Istanbul, Turkey: Traditional bathing house where you get scrubbed and pummelled by large nearly naked local ladies. Funnily enough it doesn't actually have a bath, there is just a large marble heated slab in the middle which you bake on for a while, then move to the edge of the slab for your scrubbing underneath a huge pile of soapy foam. The baths are segregated by sex, and despite a sign on the wall saying 'no naked bathing allowed', everyone in the room was naked or very close to it.
Baden Baden, Germany: Appropriately, Baden means 'to bathe' in german, as the place was named as a result of the naturally occuring thermal springs. The place I went to was a massive, modern glass structure with an enormous selection of different sized pools of various temperatures. Being Australian, and not used to being naked in public, I'd chosen this place because of its swimming costumes worn policy, as opposed to the place over the road which was strictly naked mixed bathing as I didn't feel up to the full naked mixed bathing german challenge. So, after soaking for a while in the pools, I went upstairs to the sauna section, to find that the sauna section is mixed and naked. Oh well, as the saying goes, 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do'. So with a deep breath, off went the swimmers. Its funny how quickly you can get used to things as soon enough I was sweating away in the sauna feeling reasonably relaxed. I momentarily panicked in the steam room when I looked around and realised I was the only woman in a room full of naked men. Time to move on. I was reasonably chuffed with myself for breaking out of my comfort zone, and doing something I hadn't done before. I also realised that in about an hour I'd been exposed to more male nudity than I had in my entire life up to that point. Definitely a learning experience.

Dieting Dramas

This entry will be incredibly boring for most guys and for those lucky women who never have to worry about their weight, but for anyone else whose every struggled with what they eat, this might be of interest.
When I hit the age of about 21 or 22 my metabolism slowed down significantly, and I put on quite a bit of weight. Up until this point I had never had to worry about what I ate. I tried various diets, often losing weight, then putting it back on and then some when I returned to my normal eating habits. Furthermore I felt powerless by food, unable to resist cravings and trapped by lots of obsessing about what I was or wasn't eating or about to eat. It took up a lot of energy and left me quite unhappy, not to mention the unhappiness I felt because of the way I looked.
So, last October I stumbled across a book in a second hand bookstore called Eating Less by Gillian Riley. This book has completely changed my relationship to food. She considers overeating as a form of addiction, and outlines ways of dealing with it accordingly. The book has nothing to do with dieting, and a lot to do with self esteem. Ironically, you have to forget all about losing weight, as that is a sure way to fail. As backwards as it sounds, it has worked for me very well. I can honestly say since reading the book I have not binged once to extent that I did before. I no longer obsess over food and spend a lot less time and energy thinking about it. I find myself eating healthily with little effort. And I've lost 12kgs so far, but just as Gillian predicts, thats not what I value the most. Its the peace I've gained.

Praia de Mira, Portugal, September 2005

Praia de Mira is a sleepy little beachside town on the Portugese coast where some Portugese families go for summer holidays. Foreign tourists are rare, and serious development nowhere to be seen. This blue and white stripey shack is the local church, right on the beach. My brother and I accidently almost walked through a funeral party leaving the church on our way to the sand. Having since seen many areas of huge ugly condominium developments further south along the coast, this little place is a gem, and I hope developers never find it.

Turkey, May 2005

This picture is one of my favourites from Turkey. We (two bus loads of young Australian and New Zealand tourists) had pulled up at a lookout to watch the sunset in the amazing Cappadocia region. A Turkish family had the same idea. I approached the girl and her older sister (not pictured) and asked using gestures if I could take a photo of them. They were shy and ran away, and I chased them around for a bit playing a version of tag, where the tagging was me getting a picture of them and they ran around screaming delightedly. The older lady (pictured) offered me nuts and we attempted conversation, unfortunately not very successfully as she spoke zero English and my Turkish was limited to 'Hello', 'Thank you' and one other phrase which I'll get to shortly. Once they realised they could see the picture immediately on my digital camera, the girl and the older lady posed for me. As I left I tried out the phrase our Turkish tour guide had taught us. He said it sounds like 'Allah lost my duck' and is used on departure, and means roughly, 'I am leaving, but god will look after you'. So, feeling ridiculous, I raised my hand, waved and let rip 'Allah lost my duck'. I was rewarded with smiles and waving in return. The whole episode was a warm fuzzy one.

Welcome to my Blog!

Hello and welcome to my blog. The purpose of it is to share random happenings, opinions and experiences from my life. I've done a fair bit of travelling in the last year and so that will be the subject of lots of my entries, particulary in the beginning. I'm also learning HTML and so will customise this site and hopefully make it more interesting. Feedback or comments are always welcome.