Old Smokey

Jakarta was too hot and humid and so I decided to do what many locals do and head for the hills. My destination was Bandung, Java's favoured hill station. The weather is certainly more pleasant than Jakarta's oppressive heat and humidity, but that's about it. Bamdung has now mushroomed into Indonesia's third-largest city and has much the same traffic and air-quality problems as Jakarta. Along with the weather most Indonesians come to Bandung either to study or to go shopping at the city's many outlet stores. Those of you who know me will know that neither of those could possibly be a reason for me to come. So what drew me to Bandung?

The smoking, sulphurous crater Tangkuban Perahu is Bandung's premier tourist spot and it's possible to drive right up to the rim in your car. Souvenir vendors do a roaring trade in furry hats as intrepid Indonesians brave arctic temperatures (well, it's around 10 degrees, which is freezing for them).

Pics 1 (Belgium to Finland)

So far my time in Tehran has been rather mundane, with most of my time spent lazing at home, watching various films I'd picked up en route and sorting through my pictures, getting rid of duds and touching up the others. I'm about half way through them and so thought I might post a few of my favourites because when I'm on the road I don't always get the opportunity to add pics to my posts even when I would like to and along the way I've taken a few pics that I really like and would like to share.

Bruges canals by night.

Church door in Brussels.

Clichéd maybe, but still very pretty. Windmills at Kinderdijk.

The red light district in Groningen. The prostitutes sit behind the glass doors on show for prospective clients. During the day not so many of them are at work and they while away the time by reading, knitting or chatting with their neighbours. The setting is happily mundane and ordinary.

One of the main portals of Bremen's cathedral. As you can see Jesus looks all beatific whilst the evil Jews have devious faces and hooked noses. Obviously this door was made prior to WWII and so today, alongside the door, there is a plaque with a long apology for the Holocaust and explanation of the door's iconography.

Roof detail of Lubeck's Marienkirche.

Detail of the colourful houses in Ribe.

Grey day in Visby.

Obviously these stones do not roll as they have gathered some very photogenic lichen. Gotland.

Reflected trees in Stockholm's peaceful Skogskyrkogården cemetery.

Quiet little alleyway in Stockholm's Gamle Stan (Old Town).

Grave goods from a Viking burial, including a bronze Buddha. God only knows the things that little statuette must have seen on its voyage from the subcontinent to Scandinavia.

Amateur photographer and his muse on Oslo's cool opera house.

One of the many, expressive, enchanting statues in Oslo's Vigeland Park. Public art at its best.

The colourful, wooden, Hansa warehouses of Bergen's Bryggen district.

The wooden stave church at Urnes is almost 850 years old. Not bad going.

After attending a country music festival in the small town of Skjolden I couldn't be bothered to find a place to sleep and so just passed out on a bale of rock wool at the local port. It was quite comfy actually.

A good night's haul dumpster diving with Monica in Røros.

The incredible Lofoten islands.

Getting lost in Finland's Arctic forests in Oulanka national park.

Flowers by the window of an old, wooden house in old Rauma.

Fietsen In Friesland

Along with tulips, clogs, windmills and cheese the Netherlands is famous for being both the most densely populated country (of any consequence) in Europe, as well as the most intensively cultivated. Given these two pressures on space I imagined the country to be a duotony of cities and fields. The towns of the Randstand - the super-conurbation where two thirds of the population live and that spreads in a crescent from Utrecht in the northeast via Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam to Dordrecht in the southeast - are certainly visually rather samey: sober brick buildings with a historic core both surrounded and bisected by canals. And for most visitors this is the only image they will get of the Netherlands. I wanted to see the other half too; the polders reclaimed from the clutches of the North Sea, the unending flat lands, the most productive farming area in the world. It's amazing to think that such a small country could be the world's third-largest agricultural exporter (by value). I pictured it to be some grim, soulless, bio-factory.

Typical dutch country house with its own, ultra-green patch of garden and bijou canal.

Shiny Happy People

Travelling in the Netherlands is a dawdle: distances are small, the public transport infrastructure is extensive, and you don't even have to wait long to hitch a ride. But above all the vast majority of people speak English. This not only helps when buying bus tickets, but also allows you to have more complex discussions, about politics, religion and family life; things that make people tick.

I've always had a soft spot for the Dutch: their live-and-let-live liberalism; their openness to foreigners; their modest, hard-working Calvinism; and their appreciation of British humour. The few Dutch people I have spoken to, however, are worried that their country may be seen to be losing its tolerant ways to the wave of protectionism and xenophobia that has been sweeping through Western countries (epitomised by, but not restricted to, anti-Islamic sentiments and pronouncements) and that has found its voice here in the form of the controversial politician Geert Wilders with his loopy views on Islam and immigration. There is a growing sense of impending doom as the national elections approach that his party might become a dominant force. Sitting side by side with the stereotype of liberalism is that of being dour, serious and humourless. This stems from their Calvinist history which frowns on ostentation and demands that people be honest with each other. To outsiders who may be more used to elaborate formalities when dealing with people this may come across as rudeness, but instead it is an effort to be as clear and precise as possible and to talk openly about things which are often swept under the carpet. In fact the Dutch abhor confrontation and work through consensus whenever possible (on two separate occasions I was introduced to the idea of the polder model, something the Dutch are quite proud of, and quite rightly so in my view).

A typically stereotypical (although actually not that common) Dutch countryside scene, complete with your obligatory windmills. Kinderdijk.

Philosophers And Enclaves

One of the best things about travelling is the people you meet. In your everyday life you generally see the same people day in day out or people from within your "circle". Travelling allows you to break out of your milieu and connect with people you would never normally encounter.

I met Saïd in a community centre in Antwerp where I was watching an "African dance" class and a practice session of a Brazilian percussion band (the players were Belgian, but the music and instruments were Brazilian) where my host, Saartje, is a member. Saïd was working behind the bar. He was born in Antwerp, but as his name (and features) suggests, he is of Moroccan descent. As well as working as a barman Saïd dabbles as a raï singer and is available for hire for marriages and other social occasions. He is one of those rare things (although more common amongst the bartending classes): a street philosopher. When he heard about my travel plans he began to expound, in broken English and thick, east Flemish, his philosophy on travelling.

"Some people travel to forget," he explained, adding a wide, backwards sweeping gesture with his arm for emphasis, "but some people travel to learn," tapping on the bar on the last word. "To learn is important when travelling." I had never heard it put that way but I liked the sound of it and it made sense to me. I got on well with Saïd - he gave me a bolleke on the house.

From Antwerp I headed north out of Belgium and into the Netherlands, and back into Belgium, and then back into the Netherlands, and then into Belgium again. I wasn't going round in circles, instead I was just passing through Baarle Hertog-Nassau, a small town that can perhaps lay claim to be Europe's oddest. Baarle's weird history dates back to various treaties signed between the Lords of Breda and Dukes of Brabant who divided up the land between them rather haphazardly. When Belgium and the Netherlands separated in 1848 the Duchy of Brabant became Belgian whereas Breda remained in the Netherlands. If you were to look closely at a map of the border area between the towns of Turnhout and Breda you would see a little blob of border a few kilometres into the Dutch side. Ah, you would say, a Belgian enclave. Enclaves are quite common around the world and so are not that special, but if you were to look even more closely, you would see that some of the Belgian enclaves within the Netherlands themselves contain further Dutch enclaves within them - see the map below to get a better idea (after a certain amount of research I've discovered that there are only 2 other places in the world that have similar counter-enclaves: India-Bangladesh and Oman-UAE). The town itself is pretty ordinary and apart from the joint Belgian and Dutch flags that fly from many buildings, as well as the border markings on the pavements, you wouldn't tell that you were crossing from one country to another. Although I expect the residents of Baarle were amongst the most content with the Schengen border treaty and the introduction of the euro.