Twenty Degrees East

Dubrovnik, Croatia

This post is current, for a change, because we got back yesterday!

We needed a short break and decided to go straight after Easter. We left on Wednesday, April 3rd and returned Sunday, April 7th. It’s not easy choosing a place to go at this time of year that has the promise of some warmth and sunshine, is not too far away and that we have not visited before, but Dubrovnik was on my wish list and so despite a lukewarm reaction from M and tales of it being overcrowded, I decided to book us into the Hilton Imperial Hotel anyway and off we went!

Getting there was a LOT flight to Zagreb and then Croatia Airlines to Dubrovnik. On the return trip we had a direct flight from Dubrovnik to Warsaw with LOT. It’s about a 30 minute taxi ride between the airport and town and it cost €50 one way and €40 the other, the hotel said their car would cost €60.

It’s always nice when a trip involves “no shit happening” and this one went well. Flights were on time and trouble free; no bags got lost or damaged; taxi drivers (actually the same one, Antonio) didn’t try to kill us, get lost or try to rip us off; the hotel lived up to expectations and only charged us once and for the right things; nobody got sick or injured. This was all something of a relief because the last time I was invited to travel to Dubrovnik, back in 1996, the plane I would have been on, crashed, and everyone on board died. Very spookily, I just noticed that the crash happened on exactly the same day as the flight we just took – April 3rd – whoa!

Apart from all the logistics going well, we both very much enjoyed Dubrovnik, which is an ideal destination for a 3-4 day break in the shoulder season. It is a compact city squeezed between the Adriatic and the hills, beyond which lies Bosnia & Herzegovina. This is best seen from the top of Mount Srd, which can be reached by cable car from Dubrovnik, assuming you’re okay to splash out €27 per person for a return ticket – that’s nearly €4 per minute! I wasn’t sure what to call Srd because it is variously described as a mountain and hill but at 403m high it qualifies as a mountain in most places, although not in the UK where it would be a hill because it’s not over 610m high. Anyway, from the top you can look down on Dubrovnik, Lokrum island and out to sea or in the other direction you can see the border with Bosnia & Herzegovina. To be honest, neither view is worth the €54 we spent to get up there and (with added queuing) back again, but it is one of those things that has to be done, so we did it.

Dubrovnik is small, not just physically small but also administratively, with a population of only 43,000. This is why it ranks as the most over-touristed place in Europe, with 36 tourists per head of population; Venice only has 21. It also means that if you moved at a decent pace you could do all the ‘highlights’ in a day, including pretty much every street of the old town, both harbours, walk the walls, explore Lovrijenac fort, the cable car and depending on timing possibly also catch a ferry to Lokrum and back as well. Most importantly, it means you need to avoid peak season because the crowds must be unbearable. I checked the cruise ship schedule and during our time there only one ship, with a capacity of about 2,500 passengers, spent a day docked in Dubrovnik. Getting into May and beyond, that increases to multiple ships almost every day and every passenger that goes ashore is being funnelled into the same small area to mingle with all the non-cruise tourists, everyone with the same attractions on their hit-list. I can’t speak from experience but it must be pretty nasty.

So what did we do? Well, we did everything mentioned in the highlights above with the exception of Lokrum island, which we are saving for next time. We didn’t take any organised tours, especially not any of the ‘Game of Thrones’ tours that are so popular because of all the Dubrovnik locations used for the filming but we did bump into many of them along the way. We did see I think three Iron Thrones and it looks like there’s at least one more on Lokrum island. Ignoring all other attractions, Game of Thrones and the cable car alone must bring a ton of money to Dubrovnik every year.

Walking the walls is good but not easy. It’s a 2km walk, which is fine but there are more than 1,000 steps – up, down, up, down, up, down – and in places you can feel a bit uneasy because of the height and the narrowness of the walkways, sometimes with pretty useless barriers if you did decide to take a tumble. All in all, definitely worth doing but just be careful and take it slow. Thankfully, there are a couple of bars up there!

We didn’t go out of our way to seek out the best food or the lowest prices. We just ate and drank in convenient places that looked pretty good. Given that the whole place is tourist trap it’s not easy to get “off the beaten track” so there aren’t really any options – you’re just choosing between overpriced pizza or overpriced sea bass. That said, the food we had was plenty good enough without being a highlight of the trip. We had a few drinks on the main street, Stradun, where it’s easy to pay €16 for an average quality Aperol or €9 for a beer.

The hotel, Hilton Imperial, was pretty good – certainly very well located just a short walk from Pile Gate entry to the old town. Great breakfast buffet with pancakes and eggs to order if you wanted. Service was a bit mixed. The breakfast manager and the guy running the terrace bar were great, the reception staff were less impressive but overall the hotel did enough that we probably wouldn’t be looking for anything else next time we visit.

Overall it was a very nice trip and despite her initial reservations, M had a great time. We would go again although having done pretty much everything this time, apart from Lokrum island we’d be scratching our heads how to fill the time. It’s a lovely place, but it’s not Rome, Paris or London, where you can visit fifty times and still not run out of ideas, but if you just want to chill with a bit of sunshine in a pretty place by the sea, Dubrovnik works.

SoCal Summer (final part)

From Palm Springs we were headed for San Diego and the original intention was to visit the Palomar Observatory on the way but a wildfire called Bonny near Aguanda put an end to that idea. Instead we decided to go via the town of Julian, a former gold-rush town that is famous for its apple pies. Before we actually got to Julian we stopped at the Julian Pie Company in Santa Ysabel to see whether the pies live up to the hype – they do!

The town of Julian was nice enough. Small and quiet with wood-panelled buildings and just a hint of tourist trap. We didn’t stay long.

And so we arrive in San Diego at the Omni Hotel, right next door to Petco Park, the baseball ground and home of the San Diego Padres.

The Omni was fine. It’s a business-style hotel across the street from the convention centre, so it was big and lacked personality but it did everything we needed – food was okay, good service, rooms were comfortable and it had a large, well equipped and serviced pool area. We had a room on the 19th floor with a view of the bay and Coronado. Location worked well for us because we could walk into the Gaslamp quarter and it was directly connected to the baseball park where we had tickets for a game.

We like San Diego, which has a great climate and bit of everything in a fairly easily navigated area. It’s got beaches, parks, a zoo, museums, funky places, bayside stuff, business stuff, Navy stuff, short trips to La Jolla or Del Mar, pretty good transportation…the one thing it hasn’t got is an old town area that’s worth visiting. We did visit it, of course, but I wouldn’t recommend anyone else wasting their time doing that. It’s like a poorly executed Disneyland version of an old town where all the vendors are sad because they know they’re working at the least interesting tourist spot in San Diego and all the tourists are sad because they know they’ve just wasted a few hours of their day. Even the location gives you a clue as to what happened. When the developers arrived to build San Diego as we know it today, they took one look at the old town and said “Screw this! Let’s just build an airport next to it, and highways going past it, and then we can find a much better place to build the city”. And that’s what they did.

We did quite a lot while we were in San Diego. The day visiting Del Mar and La Jolla was nice. Del Mar has a kind of Beach Boys vibe and the walk along the coast at La Jolla with the seals and seabirds was great. We popped into the bohemian-hipster North Park district; we did Balboa Park and some of the museums there; we admired the Mormon temple that has been carved out of caster sugar. The Gaslamp area had a lot going on and is maybe a good place to get drunk and stupid late at night but was otherwise a bit disappointing.

Liberty Public Market was a nice place to visit, with a food hall and a good collection of other places to shop, eat and drink and we managed to catch up with our friend Lech there. We know Lech and his wife, Santa, from Warsaw but because Lech manages the building and opening of large factories he has to go where the factories are and this time he was working on something big just over the border in Tijuana, Mexico.

We got very lucky when eating dinner at The Fish Market because (unknown to us) the owners were sat at a table nearby and partly because they thought we were being disturbed by a family at the table next to us (which we weren’t) and partly because they liked my Aloha shirt, they told the waiter not to charge us for the meal! Once we found out what was going on, we went over and thanked them and had a little chat before we left to admire USS Midway, the “Unconditional Surrender” statue and the bronzes of Bob Hope and various military figures.

One of the big attractions for us in San Diego was our first ball game. The game was between the San Diego Padres and their local rivals the LA Dodgers on Friday Aug 4th. According to ESPN, this is what happened..

Chris Taylor and pinch-hitter J.D. Martinez drew consecutive bases-loaded walks during a Padres bullpen meltdown in the five-run eighth inning that lifted the NL West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers to a 10-5 win Friday night, their sixth straight victory against San Diego.

What we saw was a lot of very fast throwing, not much hitting, some catching, a lot of fan commentary and things going on that we didn’t really understand. The overall experience was very good and we are glad we went but I have to confess that we left before the end and that it is probably the last time we’ll be going to a baseball game.

Our time in San Diego was up and we drove to Anaheim for Disneyland. A journey that was not without incident because we managed to confront some Marines with big guns at Camp Pendleton while looking for a gas station and also use a toll road that was not part of our rental car package and would therefore incur a penalty – but apart from that it was fine!

I’d decided to book us into an “off park” motel instead of one of the Disney hotels and we stayed at the Park Vue Inn. Have to say that we’d probably do the same again. It was far cheaper and super easy for accessing Disneyland. Just cross the street and you’re walking down the main esplanade with the entrance to California Adventure Park on your left or Disneyland Park on your right. The motel itself was plenty good enough even if it did remind us of the sort of place where detectives would be finding the latest victim of a serial killer. A large U-shaped run of two storey buildings with apartments on both floors, a giant car park in the middle which also housed the swimming pool area, a reception, a small convenience store and an IHOP right next door . Everything the Disney-goer could need.

We had two-day tickets with the Genie+ thing to help with wait times. Given the extreme heat we wanted to take it easy so we were only in the parks from early afternoon into the evening. Genie+ works pretty well if you’re organised and allows you to book Lightning Lane access to most rides, although only one ride at a time and you can’t book the next until you’ve finished the first, hence the need to be organised. The most popular rides, in our case it was Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in one park and Radiator Springs Racers in the other, were not covered by Genie+ but you could buy Lightning Lane access separately through the app while in the park. I don’t like or agree with all these extra charges on top of what is already an expensive ticket but the combination of Genie+ and paying for those two rides allowed us to do everything we wanted in both parks easily within the two visits and without having to spend any time queuing outside a ride and with limited (but unavoidable whatever you do) queuing inside the rides.

Despite concerns that Disneyland is for kids, and we had no kids with us, we quite enjoyed ourselves. Three rides managed to get a scream or two out of Marta; Star Wars, Radiator Springs and Thunder Mountain Railroad and the others we went on were equally enjoyable in their own way. The fireworks on our last evening there were very good, viewed from Main Street looking toward the castle. I doubt we will go again but it was a long-shot that paid off.

And that brings us to the end of our trip! From Disneyland we headed the next morning to LAX, dropped off the rental car and flew back home, spending the next few days getting over the jet-lag. Only disappointment was that while parked at Park Vue Inn, someone, probably with one of those ridiculously-sized pick-up trucks, had damaged our rental car. We hadn’t been using the car so didn’t notice until the morning we were headed for the airport. The motel could see nothing on their CCTV system so there was nothing we could do. As we’d got the full insurance, it wasn’t going to cost us anything but it did mean filling out a lot of paperwork when we dropped the car. A slightly annoying note to finish what had otherwise been an excellent and trouble-free exploration of Southern California.

SoCal Summer (part 2)

After a couple of hours delay getting away from Santa Barbara (waiting for someone to turn up and open the shop so I could buy the Aloha shirts mentioned in part 1) we finally hit the road and headed for Las Vegas. It doesn’t look far on the map but it’s a six-hour drive so we broke it up with a stop at Peggy Sue’s 50’s Diner on the I-15.

Peggy Sue’s was built in 1954 and then zhuzhed up in the 80’s by new owners. We were going to be eating when we arrived in Vegas so I think we just shared some pie and a drink before getting back on the road. Fun place, seemed quite authentic but what do I know.

The I-15 was easy enough but seemed to go on forever, even though the part we were driving was a small fraction of the over 1,400 miles (2,250 km) this Interstate runs, all the way from the Mexican border near San Diego up to the Canadian border where it connects with the Alberta Highway 4. We arrived in Vegas at around 8pm and after surviving the security theatre at the entrance to the gated estate, we were welcomed into the home of Roddy and Shirley. I worked (and golfed) with Roddy for many years in the UK back in the 90’s and we’ve kept in touch ever since. They moved to the USA a long time ago and ended up in Vegas, and were kind enough to offer to put us up for a couple of nights. The house was huge, with a lovely outdoor pool/lounge/dining area where we enjoyed a barbecue, some beers and watching the hummingbirds feed.

Having arrived late the first day and the following night being reserved for dinner at a wonderful restaurant local to Roddy’s place, we didn’t have a chance to do ‘the strip’ at night but we did find time to do Bellagio and Caesar’s Palace on the one free day we had in Vegas. Trying to limit our exposure to the extreme heat – over 40C – these two looked a good choice because you can take an air-conditioned tunnel under the street between the two hotels, and we’d been warned not to consider taking a stroll down the strip in any weather – it’s huge.

Let’s get the hot news out of the way first – we gambled, and won, in both places! We started with a few one-armed-bandits, which are really not as enjoyable when you just press a button, even less so when you lose all your money. We moved on to me playing blackjack and Marta playing roulette. In Bellagio we bet a total (including the wasted $50 on slots) of $150 and walked away with $450, it would have been a lot more if the croupier hadn’t suggested (trying to be helpful I guess) that Marta didn’t put everything on the number 11 that she was convinced was a winner (and it was!) and if I hadn’t simply got bored of winning at the blackjack table. In Caesar’s we bet $100 and left with $200. On our short visit, the Bellagio was by far the better experience but Caesar’s seemed to have the more serious gamblers, especially at the craps tables.

Wishing to continue our desert heat experience, our next stop was Palm Springs where temperatures were topping 45C. On the way we stopped to take a look at the Hoover Dam – without crossing into Arizona because our rental car , strangely enough, was only allowed in California and Nevada. We parked just short of the dam (here) and then climbed the stairs to get to a footbridge with views down to the dam. The view was amazing but the wind was so strong that Marta very nearly got blown away!

We had to adjust the route from there to Palm Springs because of a wildfire so we took the 95, 62, 177 and I-10 with a short detour into Joshua Tree National Park. We were in the wrong place and didn’t have time for the full Joshua Tree experience but it was enough. The drive across the desert was everything you’d expect; the road stretching endlessly in a straight line to the horizon with a few peaks as a backdrop in the far distance. It was surprising how the road got significantly worse when crossing into California from Nevada and also how few places there were to stop along the way for fuel, a drink, whatever.

We arrived in Palm Springs and checked in at the Ingleside Estate, something that Elizabeth Taylor, Salvador Dali, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando and many other stars had done in years past. Needless to say, our welcome was warm but perhaps not as gushing as theirs. It was actually a lovely place to stay. A great room and service, good food in Melvyn’s restaurant and a really nice pool area. Laid back vibe, more like serviced apartments than a hotel.

We weren’t particularly impressed by Palm Springs though. I could imagine it would be a good place to visit for a golfing holiday in the winter, or attending the Coachella music festival, but apart from that it’s not somewhere we will be returning to. I guess the two most notable things about our stay were the haboob (desert storm) and the gayness. We woke on the first and only full day we had in Palm Springs to find that the hills immediately behind the hotel, that had been so visible when we arrived, had vanished into a cloud of dust. The air quality index was 648; hazardous level starts at 300! By comparison, at the same time, the AQI in San Diego, our next destination, was 47. I’ve never encountered anything like it and it really did feel like you were breathing more dust than air. Despite the warnings, we explored the town including the Marilyn statue and the 1946 icon of modern architecture, Kaufmann House by Richard Neutra. Returning to the hotel, we spent some time by, and in, the pool, which was fine once you’d scraped the layer of dust off the top! As for gayness, well, it was like we’d stumbled into a film set where every actor was a 45-60 year-old gay man. This was most apparent in both of the restaurants we ate at as well as the hotel itself. Staff and customers alike. In the second restaurant, Spencer’s, Marta was almost the only woman there and the place was jammed. Excellent food by the way, I’d certainly recommend the place. Of course there’s nothing wrong with encountering an overabundance of gay men, but nobody had mentioned it and it was so far beyond anything we’d seen before that it was a bit of a shock. Maybe it was just the time of year, or the specific area we stayed in?

I’m going to end part 2 right here, which means there’ll be a part 3 covering the last stops before flying home – Julian, San Diego and Disneyland.

SoCal Summer (part 1)

After a quick debate that Italy lost, and a realisation that we didn’t have many options of dates for our summer holiday, we decided upon and then booked a trip to Southern California (plus a bit of Nevada). We left July 20th and returned August 8th. Unlike previous USA trips, it was just the two of us. Zosia stayed home.

The trip started in Los Angeles and then we drove to; Santa Barbara, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, San Diego and Disneyland (Anaheim) from where we returned to LAX for the flight home. We’ve done LA before, in 2016 and 2018, and I’d been to that Disneyland many years ago but the rest were all firsts for both of us.

Flights both ways were with LOT, direct between Warsaw and LAX. It’s an 11-12hr flight, which is too long, but neither were cancelled (like the last time we booked this route with LOT) and both were on time using a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner. Going out, the flight was more or less full but coming back we had some space to spread out and had a 3-seat middle row to ourselves. The only thing really worth mentioning about the flights is how awful the food was in terms of both quantity and quality. Considering how long the flight is and the fact that even in economy the tickets are not exactly cheap (6,500 PLN return, each), I think it’s reasonable to expect a lot better than we got. If we’d known, we would have bought sandwiches, drinks and snacks at the airport and been a lot happier.

Los Angeles

We like LA. The last two times we’d visited we stayed in West Hollywood so this time we were either going to go for the beach or downtown and as there were more things on the ‘to do’ list downtown, that’s where we ended up. We stayed at the Hotel Figueroa, which is part of the Unbound Collection by Hyatt. Excellent hotel. Easily the best we’ve stayed at in LA and the best of all on this trip. Everything was great; room, lobby, bar, cafe, pool and especially the service.

We ticked off a lot of things we’d not done before in LA. Roughly two days downtown, a day in Hollywood and a day at the beach. We had a nice meal at the Michelin starred “Camphor” in the Arts District, lobster rolls in Grand Central Market and crab in Santa Monica. We saw the Keith Haring exhibition at The Broad, rode on the Angels Flight, went up the tower at City Hall, walked the length of downtown from Olvera back to our hotel, revisited the Walk of Fame, another walk from Venice to Santa Monica, and a lot more besides.

After what is now in total two to three weeks in LA, we’ve pretty much done everything we want to do.

Santa Barbara

We rented a Toyota Rav 4 from Midway Car Rental in LA and drove for a couple of hours to Santa Barbara. Midway and the car were both good and we’d use them again. First time I’d used Apple CarPlay and it’s great, although I spent a few days complaining about how dark the screen was before I found the pretty obvious way to make it brighter!

Santa Barbara seemed tiny, quiet and old-fashioned compared to LA, which is to be expected as it’s like comparing London to Weston-super-Mare. Although there are a few hotels, for the most part the accommodation is in smaller scale, motel type places in residential areas and we were in one of those, the Harbor House Inn, a short walk from the beach.

The town seems geared to beach-life and boating and this is backed up by the range of beach/sea equipment that was available to borrow from the storeroom of our Inn. One afternoon we took advantage of that and spent a very nice time on a nearly empty beach. I even went for a swim in the sea and had a close encounter with a family of seals, which was a lot of fun!

We took a day trip out to Solvang where we visited the Mission and then moved on to the Rideau Vineyard, which was established in 1997 by Iris Rideau, the first female African-American winery owner in the USA. They were very hospitable and happy to spend time talking about their vineyard and wine making process despite the fact we couldn’t take any home and they don’t have a license to sell in Europe. We did try a few glasses though!

Another trip was to Montecito, the hillside idyll that is or was home to Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Rob Lowe, Tyler Perry, Ariana Grande and other stars. Very quiet place. All the interesting stuff is pretty well hidden away, not that we went looking. Had a drink at a cafe, saw a very nice E Type, bought some mints and left.

Perhaps the highlights of Santa Barbara were the meals we had at Brophy Bros restaurant and the Hawaiian (Aloha) shirts I bought in their store. The Blue Point oysters were delicious and very fresh, as was everything they served and it’s a lovely view from their balcony across the harbour. The shirts are Reyn Spooner and the number of nice comments I got when wearing them, even when I got home, was surprising because I’m no kind of fashion guru.

Done with Santa Barbara we got back in the car and headed over to Las Vegas, Nevada, which will kick us off in part 2.

Zosia goes to university

Zosia was keen to study outside of Poland and the UK and the Netherlands were considered. Thanks to Brexit the cost of universities in the UK rose considerably, even for someone with a British passport like her and they weren’t really offering a lot for it, so the focus was on the Netherlands. She applied and was accepted by both Erasmus University Rotterdam and by Amsterdam University for two different courses in each. In the end she chose to study a three-year International Bachelor in Psychology at Erasmus.

Aside from all the other considerations, this meant finding somewhere for her to live in Rotterdam, starting late August. Luckily, and partly by design, her boyfriend of 2 years, Iwo, had been accepted a year earlier to study art at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam and they hoped to live together so we set out to make that happen.

The first thing you need to know about finding housing for students in Rotterdam, indeed the whole of the Netherlands, is that it is almost impossible. Google “student housing Netherlands” and the most common word in the results is “crisis”. Last year, the country was short of over 26,000 homes, meaning students had not found accommodation before starting their studies. Many were living in tents or shipping containers. Many others gave up and resigned from studying in the Netherlands, indeed universities told international students not to come unless they already had accommodation. Quite a number were tricked into paying considerable sums of money up-front only to find it was a scam and they had nowhere to live. Minefield! Quite how there can be such a disconnect between university intake and accommodation is hard to understand although it looks like something is finally happening – “In an effort to alleviate the student housing crisis, the Dutch government has introduced the National Student Housing Action Plan, aiming to build 60,000 affordable student homes between 2022 and 2030.”

Given the difficulty, it makes sense to start looking as early as possible, or does it? Firstly, you need to know whether you’ve been accepted for the course you’ve chosen. This might be provisionally known in March/April but will be dependent on them accepting your results from end of high school exams, ‘matura’ in Poland, which you won’t know until sometime in May. As most places offering accommodation expect you to sign at least a 12 month lease (often with no get-out options) it doesn’t matter how confident you are that your kid is going to pass with flying colours, you are taking quite a risk to sign such a lease before being certain. So, although we did some research beforehand, we got serious in early May.

There are a few types of accommodation available;

On or near campus housing from the university – Erasmus can only accommodate about 25% of students (this is the norm) so this was already gone. Only single rooms anyway.
Student housing/hotel provided by private developers – also very little available and was already gone. Only single rooms anyway.
Rooms in shared houses – a very mixed bag. Not as much available as you might imagine because there are special regulations applying to such housing and most landlords can’t be bothered. You need to form your own student groups before applying and groups need to be of 3 or more = herding cats. No room sharing allowed.
Private rental market – where we ended up after the three above were ruled out.

There are also a few ‘conditions’ applied by landlords which can significantly reduce the number of options for international students:

Must be Dutch, have a job in the Netherlands, or at least have a Dutch bank account, but you can’t get a Dutch bank account without having a registered Dutch address = Dutch people only.
Only Dutch guarantors allowed. As the kids have no income they need someone to guarantee payments, etc. In many cases, the landlords do not accept anything other than Dutch citizens as guarantors so, unless you have a friend or relative in the Netherlands who is prepared to take legal responsibility for everything, you’re screwed.
Guarantors allowed from another EU country but not elsewhere – gave us an advantage over some students.
Assortment of other requirements like being able to prove your income is X times more than the rent – not a problem for us but there’s a lot of paperwork involved; scans of passports, copies of bank accounts proving income, copies of employment contracts, references, explanatory letters, begging letters, ticking boxes…and almost all of this has to be done up-front, before you even get to do a viewing or be considered for anything.

As you have probably by now worked out, for every apartment there are plenty of people that want to rent it. From what we saw, I’d guess at least ten, probably more and it’s a mix of Dutch and international students as well as people moving to Rotterdam for work or just moving apartments within Rotterdam. It is VERY much what we’d say in the business is a ‘landlord’s market’. Because of that, there is no such thing as calling up an agent, telling them what you’re looking for and then sitting back and waiting for a list of options, selecting a few, doing viewings, choosing the one you want, negotiate a little, sign the lease. Oh no! Every agent is working for the landlords, not for you. For the most part, they don’t want to talk to you, see you, or waste much time on you. You have to check their website every hour of every day looking for new arrivals. If you see one you like, you need to IMMEDIATELY apply for a viewing and send them all the paperwork they want. If you delay by just a few hours, the applications for viewing will be closed and you’re out. You’re then waiting to see if you’ve been lucky enough to be selected to actually have a viewing from all those that applied. If you do get a viewing it will normally be in an ‘open house’ style with multiple people viewing at the same time, after which you are waiting to hear whether you are the one they have selected to actually offer the apartment to. If they do offer you the apartment you need to IMMEDIATELY complete any remaining paperwork and pay them the first month’s rent (irrespective of how far away the move-in date is), the deposit (another 1-3 month’s rent) and any fees that are applicable. You will also be required to sign the lease contract as well as numerous pages of associated rules and regulations. You will be very happy to do all this because it means you can stop spending half of every day going crazy hunting for accommodation and everyone can relax because you know your child will not be sleeping on the streets.

At the end of July, after a couple of stressful months, we got lucky. The kids went to Rotterdam for a week in mid-July in the hope that being there might help us find something. While they were there we managed to secure three viewings. One was a nasty place and the agent was basically doing the deal with another viewer while they were there, the second would not accept a guarantor outside of the Netherlands (although this was not made clear beforehand) and the third was really nice. A couple of weeks later I got a call from the agent saying we’d been chosen for the third apartment and it was ours as long as did the paperwork and paid the following day, which we did. Hurrah!

Zosia and Iwo’s apartment is great! It’s spacious, nearly 60 m2, with a lounge/kitchen/dining room, a balcony, a bedroom, bathroom, separate toilet and fiber-optic internet. The whole place has been done to a high quality. It’s on the first floor up narrow steep stairs but that’s very common in the Netherlands and a lot of other apartments are on even higher floors or in the attic space, which would get very annoying after a while. The building is from 1902 and is perfectly located in Kralingen, next-door to the centre of Rotterdam and half-way between Zosia’s and Iwo’s universities (10 minute bicycle ride), with tram right outside the door and metro, shops, etc, a very short walk away. There were only two wrinkles; first that it was not available until October 1st, and they started university a month earlier. This was solved thanks to a kind relation on Iwo’s side who lives in Rotterdam and was able to put them up for a month. It was not a perfect arrangement, but it worked. The second wrinkle was that it is unfurnished. It has fully-fitted kitchen and bathroom, it has curtains and light fittings but nothing else – no washing machine, no furniture so when we visited them to help with the handover and moving in, we spent a lot of quality time in Ikea to get the essentials. We also found a great place for excellent second-hand washing machines too! In the end everything went well – the handover was smooth, Ikea delivered everything we ordered, the ‘men with a van’ delivery from Warsaw turned up on time and the kids moved into their first home together!

So, how much does it cost? Well this is interesting because it doesn’t seem to matter what the accommodation is, the price is more or less €600-750 per person, per month. For renting a room somewhere, it’s the same price irrespective of the size, the quality of the building, the location, furnished or unfurnished. With apartments the same, a one bedroom apartment for two people, is double the ‘unit price’, meaning €1,200-1,500 a month whatever and wherever it is. There are a few exceptions, but not many. We are paying €1,350 a month plus utilities. Cost of utilities is quite flexible thanks to inflation and government subsidies but is roughly, per month; electricity & gas €200, water use €20, water taxes €13, trash disposal €30. Looking at what else is available for the same money, I’d say we’ve done very well.

While we were there, we took the opportunity to visit a few places in the Netherlands, as well as a week in Paris using the fast Thalys train connection. All in all, our ‘summer holiday’ for 2022 can be considered a success.

The end of a generation

Once upon a time, there were two brothers in Ilkeston, Eric (born 1926) and Keith (born 1931) who married two sisters from Leicester, Margaret (born 1928) and Dorothy (born 1933). Keith and Dorothy had two children, me and my sister Diane. Eric and Margaret had no children and were my only uncle and aunt. A small family.

Here they all are at my parent’s wedding in 1955 – left to right; Eric, Keith, Dorothy, Margaret, George (father of Dorothy and Margaret)

George is obviously here representing the previous generation, my grandparents. All born at the turn of the century and died between 1964 and 1978. Mary died suddenly when I was five, the rest were gone before my 20th birthday and they were grandparents, so it was expected.

What you don’t expect so much, even though it’s obvious, is that your parents and their generation will also die sometime. Even though I left home at 19 and spent most of my life not living close to them – Margaret & Eric never left the East Midlands and the rest of my family moved back there from London in the 80’s while I stayed in London – these four people were the only constant in my life, alongside Queen Elizabeth II.

So, imagine the surprise when Uncle Eric was the first to leave us in 2011, aged 85. The first ominous sign that this generation was not going to live forever after all. Margaret followed in 2018, the only one to reach the age of 90. Then, following a car accident, a broken hip from a fall and covid, dad decided he’d had enough in 2021 (despite promising mum that he’d not go before her) and just a couple of months ago in 2022, the last of this generation, my mum, went to be reunited with dad. Both mum and dad were 89 when they died.

To complete the removal of all the seemingly immortal people in my life, the Queen, of course, also died this year, just a month or so before mum. She beat us all by making it to the age of 96 but then she could afford better healthcare and had more people looking after her.

The target has now moved to my sister and I. We are now the oldest generation. We are the grandparents. Well, technically my sister is a grandparent and I’m only a grand-uncle right now but the point is – we’re next! I’m 63, Diane is 58 so with luck we have a while before it’s our turn but we are both now very aware that there’s nobody in front of us in the queue for eternal rest and redemption.

Rest in Peace: Eric, Margaret, mum & dad. I’m certain that by the time I get there you will have got the comfy chairs organised and found a way to make plenty of nice cups of tea.

Coronavirus – hopefully (but probably not) the last word

Just over a week ago, on December 7th, 2022, China finally abandoned its zero-Covid strategy and shifted to “living with the virus”, like the rest of the world. This came just a week after protests in the streets against the continued lock-downs and other harsh restrictions the Chinese had been forced to live with long after everyone else had dropped pretty much every anti-Covid regulation. For instance, the only measure surviving in Poland is the wearing of masks in medical facilities and drug stores, and that latter one is probably at risk of evaporating soon. So, while people are still catching Covid and many are still suffering with “long-Covid” and there is still a chance it will come back with a vengeance, for now, after three years of hell, I’m calling the end of this pandemic.

There have been a total of 657 million cases so far – about 8.5% of all humans on the planet. That puts covid-19 in fifth place in the list of all-time worst epidemics, behind HIV/AIDS (1981-today), Plague of Justinian (541-549), Spanish Flu (1918-20) and the big one, the Black Death (1346-53).

Covid-19 has now directly killed 6.7 million people – that’s roughly the entire population of Bulgaria, more than the population of Denmark or Ireland. However, that’s only the official global covid-19 death toll, if you expand that to include what are being called “excess deaths” (people who died not directly because of covid-19 but of causes attributable to the pandemic generally) the death toll rises to somewhere between 16-28 million with the ‘official’ figure set at 20.8 million and that’s DOUBLE the populations of Greece, Portugal or Sweden and heading towards the population of Australia.

The best places to ride out the pandemic were Tuvalu, Falkland Islands, Saint Helena or Vatican City, which all had cases but zero deaths. Playing the averages though, deaths per 1 million population, guess where was a great place to be – China, where it all started! China, perhaps helped by the severity of their restrictions, had only 4 deaths per million compared to 3,324 in the USA which is the 16th worst place so far. Top spot for places you didn’t want to be goes to Peru with 6,465 deaths per million. After Peru, it seems the Balkans were best avoided because most of them are in the top ten along with Bulgaria, Hungary, Czech, Slovakia, Georgia. I lived through the pandemic in Poland, which is 21st on the list with 3,138 deaths per million, worse than the UK in 26th place with 2,887. The global average is 856 and nearest well-known country to this average is Norway.

But the thing is, the pandemic is about much. much more than just cases and deaths. It has exposed inadequate health systems and governments. It has taught us a lot about human nature – good and bad. It has massively damaged economies and peoples lives. It has re-written how work is done and it has proved that a lot of this work does not have to be done in an office. It has changed the face of retail and significantly boosted on-line shopping. I guess there has never been a time on earth when so many parcels were being delivered. Sadly though, it has taken an unmeasured toll in mental health, domestic violence and confidence generally. Nobody is as comfortable now as they used to be when in crowded places, meeting rooms, concerts, parties. It has taught us not to take the life we have for granted and to cherish every small freedom we have, like being able to walk around without a mask, not disinfect every time we touch something, to shake somebody’s hand or give them a hug, to enjoy a meal in a restaurant, to travel.

Personally, I never caught covid-19 and neither did Marta or Zosia (yet) but it definitely contributed to the death of my father in February 2021, which then contributed to the decline and eventual death of my mother in October this year and thanks to my father being sent home from care while infected with covid-19, my sister and pretty much all my family in the UK got covid, some more than once. Many work colleagues have also had covid and one or two have died from it. All of which drives home what will become perhaps my most abiding memory of this pandemic – the randomness of it. Whether you were careful or not, exposed or not, vaccinated or not, to some extent didn’t seem to matter. Some people didn’t get it at all, some people got it but easy, some got it and suffered, some died, some are still suffering. I’m sure vaccinations helped but for the most part, it was a roll of the dice.

Those of us still standing have lived through the first (and hopefully only) pandemic of our lives, but the world is a very different place to what it was before it arrived and we are still trying to come to terms with that in so many ways.

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