Going Dutch: Amsterdam September 2006

I am well acquainted with Amsterdam airport and it’s fair to say that we don’t get on. I have had my luggage lost twice while travelling through there and on another occasion I was refused entry on a connecting flight because of overbooking. The latter was spectacularly unpleasant because I was heading home to donate bone marrow to my brother and I was not at my most patient. Things deteriorated when it was clear that the airport authorities didn’t believe my reason for travelling and I finally got on the plane by creating a huge disturbance which had an audience in three figures at its height. I think I was threatened with airport security. It doesn’t rank highly in my list of favourite places and I vowed after the last balls-up that I would never fly KLM again. Rather sadly, in the search for a weekend away, I discovered that my high moral stance could be bought. Not only that, the price was a measly fifty quid and a sensible flight time out of Heathrow on a Friday evening.

Schipol airport does serve as a suitable introduction to the Netherlands. This is because although it seems very big, no matter where you go you always feel cramped. The baggage reclaim at Amsterdam is situated in one of the biggest rooms I have ever seen but there is no space as the carousels are very close to each other. You have to push your way to the front as if it’s a Saturday afternoon in Primark and then it’s almost impossible to pick up your bag without smacking somebody else over the head. Thankfully my luggage did arrive though which, given my track record, I regarded as a small victory. I then had to force my way through the masses to escape. This was not helped by a brilliant bit of airport design which put the train ticket machines near the exits so you had push your way through the queues. I don’t know if you have read the novel “Puppet on a Chain” by Alistair Maclean. In the first chapter of it, one of the characters gets shot just after he lands at Schipol airport. In another of his books, “Floodgate”, a terrorist group threaten to flood the airport by blowing up various coastal defences. At first I thought that Maclean was inspired by the city but I’ve now come to the conclusion that he hated the airport as much as I do. One of the nicest things I can say about the place is that once you’re through passport control it is easy to find your way out of it. The railway station is under the airport and I waited under two minutes to get on a train to the city and paid seven times less than I did for covering the similar distance from Paddington to Heathrow.

I took an immediate dislike to Amsterdam but in fairness I imagine it’s hard to like any big city when you arrive into the centre of it at midnight on a Friday. There was large amount of building work going on opposite the central railway station and there were cranes everywhere. It was also surprisingly dark which was a bit of a worry because I had planned to walk the couple of miles to my hotel and I didn’t fancy an unplanned encounter with a canal.

My hotel was in what is called the “museum quarter” and it was a straightforward walk along the main road opposite the station. This road, Damrak, skirted the red light area (separated by a building site) and went past Dam Square. The walk took slightly longer than expected as I had to climb over stoned Hispanics and some wobbly looking British and Americans telling each other how wasted they were. There was a noticeable lack of Dutch being spoken and clearly the locals had sensibly abandoned the area and retreated back to the saner parts of the city. It was a grim walk alongside tatty shops and dirty streets but it felt good to be heading away from the city centre. As I turned towards my hotel the pavements cleared of casualties and general scruffiness and gave way to smarter bars and restaurants were there was some semblance of a normal night out going on.

The Arts Hotel is well named. It is situated directly across a canal from the Rijksmuseum and is in spitting distance of the museum devoted to Vincent Van Gogh. It was also open at one in the morning which was a huge relief to me as that was about the time I finally arrived there. It wasn’t particularly welcoming but I was too knackered to care. I didn’t know then that the easiest part of my journey had been completed and that the tricky bit was going to be getting from the reception to my room. There was no lift and I found myself staring at a near vertical staircase which each step having a width of about half of my feet. It was a perilous climb with a bag on my shoulder, trying my best not to over balance. At one stage I tilted over dangerously, hanging on to the handrail while one of my feet waved dangerously in the air trying to find a foothold. It was terrifying stuff; I’ve climbed up easier mountains. I paused when I reached the top, took in some oxygen and then swore and cursed that I had a room on the second floor and had to do it all again.

I would like to say that my room was worth the effort but even in my dazed state I could see that it wasn’t. It was a triumph of interior design in that it had a bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a sink and a television and yet I could stand in the middle of it and touch all the walls. Cat swinging space was very much at a premium but then again, that could be said of the country as a whole. Thankfully the city was to stage a remarkable recovery in daylight.

Lunch with Frankie Banana: Perugia May 2007

One of the good things about staying in Perugia is that it’s quite easy to get around to other parts of Umbria and the best way to it is to go by bus. It was a short walk from my hotel downhill to the bus station but the first thing I noticed when I got there is that there wassn’t a lot of information about. There were no timetables or posters and the booking office could easily be mistaken for a job centre reception. It really could have been anywhere. There was an information counter inhabited by a bloke sporting the world’s largest quiff. Appearances weren't deceptive  and he was every bit as disinterested as he looked. He parroted out the times of buses to Assisi and looked decidedly fed up when I asked him if there was a timetable to take home.  He rattled off the times again as if I dared to doubt his knowledge and then he sat down. Clearly the effort of answering a routine enquiry had worn him out. After a few seconds he realised that I hadn’t left and reluctantly took to his feet again. This time I asked for bus times to Gubbio and Todi and listened to him rattling off a well-rehearsed list of departures though he didn’t explain which ones applied to each destination. This was going nowhere and neither was I if this continued. I waited politely and annoyingly until he finished and asked him to start again. He pointed to a departures monitor which I hadn’t noticed before and said with thinly disguised contempt  “The same time every hour”. He then disappeared off through a doorway: dealing with three enquiries presumably qualifies him for a lie down. 

If you arrive in Perugia via the bus station, you are spared the uphill walk to the centre of town by a series of escalators. The first one leads you upwards through a plastic looking tunnel which has the usual type of advertisements plastered on the walls and leads to another street where you get on another. At first there’s nothing to talk about; the route looks exactly like any other escalator on any underground you care to mention, but then things change spectacularly. The escalator suddenly emerges into a big stone cave and which opens into a grey stone street, complete with the remains of houses and other buildings – all of this with a big stone roof 15 metres above you and lights hanging down from it. This is the Rocca Paolina the remains of medieval fort. It was built by Pope Paul III after the papacy finally defeated the city in a war fought over  salt. He decided to build a fort on top of the area of the town owned by his enemy, the Baglioni family. It’s a bizarre feeling coming up through a modern tunnel and then finding yourself in this enclosed road which has no daylight and looks as unreal as a film set. There’s still another level to go before you surface by a former palazzo with Perugia’s main street Corso Vanucci stretching out ahead and the small but beautiful Carducci gardens overlooking the Tiber valley below.

The Corso Vanucci is a wide, largely pedestrianised street of small shops and rather big pavement cafes and restaurants. It plods gently uphill to the Piazza IV Novembre  which I suppose is the heart of the city. I base this on the facts that it seems to be the largest square in the town and that is where a lot of ice creams shops are concentrated. On one corner of the piazza and Corso Vanucci is the medieval Palazzo dei Priori. A white bricked elegant building with a bell tower and a series of pointed arched windows divided into three separate oval panes and topped by crosses. Even by Italian standards, this must be one of the more spectacular town halls around. They clearly blew the budget here because on the other side of the square is a solid and unspectacular box of a building that is the cathedral.

I spent most of the rest of day wandering round the streets I had got lost in the previous evening. I had lunch in a quiet restaurant which was decorated by newspaper cuttings and photos.  They featured a short bloke with a big moustache who seemed to be called “Frankie Banana”. From what I could make out, he was a boxer and probably not a successful one as there were no pictures of him actually winning himself. There was the obligatory picture with boxing promoter Don King and newspapers making a few references to his legendary status. There were also reviews of his restaurant. I was actually served by the man himself who didn’t look much like a boxer to me but I wasn’t going to take the risk of finding out.  I made a note to look him up when I got the opportunity and I have to admit that I’ve drawn a blank so far. He may be a legend in Perugia but he doesn’t register much on Google. His restaurant’s good though.

Later that evening I returned to the Carducci gardens. Most of the benches were taken up and it wasn’t difficult to see why. The views are spectacular. I found myself sitting in a café which looked across the valley to Assisi. Darkness falls in Perugia in a beautifully gentle way, a pale blue mist seems to envelop the distant mountains and head gently towards the city gradually turning darker and darker as it gets nearer. It’s like being swallowed. Assisi gradually lit up as the skies darkened. I sat and watched it all in breathless silence with a glass of prosecco in my hand. There are perhaps too many street lights on the valley floor to make it truly beautiful but it is still a remarkable thing to watch before heading off to eat.

Perugia: The Ups and Downs: Perugia May 2007

You do get an impressive sense of what Umbria looks like from the descent into Perugia airport. You fly in over vineyard covered hills and over the wide expanse of Lago Trasimeno. It all looks green, lush and casually beautiful. It doesn’t prepare you for the shock that is touching down at Perugia though. It only receives fourteen flights a week and it’s not really geared up for the international traveller. To be honest, it might struggle to deal with a couple crop-sprayers at the same time and it’s probably the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a family run airport. There’s one building which looks like a drab out of town warehouse and it's carefully divided into very small portions. There's a departure lounge , an arrivals hall (and hall is putting it grandly to say the least) and a strip of small booths, a bar and a couple of check-in desks. There’s absolutely no space to spare. People waiting for the arriving passengers had to do it outside, standing behind a wire fence and looking like well dressed refugees in a camp.

Positioning is very important at Perugia airport. The hall contains the world’s smallest luggage carousel, a few chairs and now it had to cater for 150 people. There were only two toilet cubicles and so a queue formed (well we all seem to be British on the flight) when there was really no space to have one. As the hall filled up it began to look like a huge a large conga line and if you were stuck at the back of it, it must have felt like one too. There is no mystery about the place. It’s very clear how the luggage reaches the carousel as you see the baggage handlers put the bags on the trolleys at the plane and see them transported across the tarmac to space behind the arrivals hall. It might have been easier just to arrange the bags on the tarmac and spare us the sardine moment. If anything, the carousel is a hinderence. You do have to be quick at picking up your bag as you have exactly 15 seconds from it appearing on the carousel to disappearing again, and then you have to fight your way through the assembled masses of people. A passport is shown to an official standing in a doorway and before you know it you’re outside blinking into the sunlight. Luxurious and exciting it isn’t.

Positioning had served me well, I was one of the first out of the airport having left a string of casualtied in my wake as I fought my way out. There are no buses to town and there were very few taxis but I didn't care because I'd manged to get into 50% of them. I was  assured by my driver that I was going to have a good stay and that he knew where every hotel in Perugia was. He did too, well except one which meant a couple of circuits of the town's one way system before it came into view. I paid my 35 Euros for the journey which struck me as being a bit on the harsh side considering it was only a 12km journey plus the urban faffing about. In stuations like these I think of those lines from the Bible, “I was a stranger and you took me in". I'm sure taxi drivers on the make were not what St. Matthew was talking about but it certainly applied here. It was either that though or a bloody long walk.

I had chosen my hotel on the internet. The big selling factor was that it had a large terrace and I could easily see myself sitting there with a huge glass of wine in my hand and watching the sun go down. I walked up the steps and stood on the terrace for a few seconds before heading off to the reception. There was a wonderful sense of faded glamour to it. “This will do me,” I thought but I did wonder where all the tables and chairs were. It was incredibly bare. I soon discovered that there were other things missing from the hotel as well, namely guests. “We don’t have any water” said the receptionist, “and we don’t know when we are going to get any. We have rebooked you into another hotel which is not too far away.” As it turned out, the Hotel San Ercolano was about five minutes away and situated in a narrow cobbled street. I had been robbed of my terrace but I found myself staying in a small quiet place that was marginally nearer the city centre and very lovingly Italian. Well, it would have been if it wasn’t dangerously near “The Loch Ness” Scottish pub.

Perugia was once described to me as being the most beautiful city in Italy. I don’t think it is but it really comes close. The thing that stops it short of being truly stunning is that it incorporates so many buildings from different eras that it doesn’t really looked homogenised enough. It’s situated on a hill and the old part of it stretches out star-like from the centre with the newer parts found lower down the slopes.  To get into the city centre I had to climb up the broad sweeping steps to the side of San Ercolano church. As I was to discover very quickly, there are a lot of steps in Perugia and it’s difficult to go more than one hundred metres in any direction without going violently up or down a hill.

It’s also very easy to get lost in the city’s narrow streets and alleyways. Roads may be next to each other on my map but there can be a massive height differences between them. The most evil street is the Via Appia, a road of curved elegance if you’re walking down it, but  two hundred plus  steps of seemingly endless agony if you’re going the other way. The downward option allows you to take   a detour along the old Roman aqueduct. This is a narrow path, about two paces wide which crosses a narrow valley running through the centre of Perugia. It looks like a stone bobsleigh run and is quite possibly the most exciting skateboard journey you can ever hope to undertake though sadly nobody seemed interested in giving it a try.

The Romans were preceded here by the Etruscans and they left their mark too. Not too far from here is a tall imposing gateway of grey stone which has two great buttresses attached to it. There’s no decoration here at all. Sombre and intimidating, there’s nothing even slightly ceremonial about it. This was clearly built for defence purposes and if structures could talk this one would say “bugger off” and mean it. With the help of some Roman modifications, it has stood here for 2 300 years. It’s an impressive bit of building by anyone’s standards, though slightly spoiled by the addition of a fifteenth century loggia to one of the supports. It's like somebody's tried to build a summer house on it. One thing about walking around the city is very clear, whether it's gates or stairs or churches, grey can be incredibly beautiful.

Anyone For Real Tennis?: London August 2005

I live close to Queens’ Tennis club and have done for a couple of years but have never had cause to go there. Like most people, I associate it with a pre-Wimbledon tournament and don't think about it for the remaining fifty one weeks of the year. However on this particular rainy afternoon in August, I had an appointment to keep there. Not surprisingly, I was stopped at the main gate by a security guard. Looking at the car park I imagine that the thing that gave me away was the fact that I hadn’t driven into the place in a large German car. In fact I hadn't driven in at all. People who walk into the club must be few and far between and maybe the Hawaiian shirt wasn't a good idea. The security guard obviously fancied himself a bit but it was one of those great moments in life when you are up against someone obstructive and you know that they haven’t got a chance of winning. I was in the mood to enjoy it too.

“Good afternoon Sir, what are we doing here then?” was the friendly greeting. Sarcasm and stupidity are the usual hallmarks I associate with somebody who used to be in the police. I pointed out that as it was Queens’ Tennis club, I was here for a game of tennis. Like the sharp eyed bugger he was, he commentated on my lack of tennis racket. A quick name drop later I was ushered through the gates with humble apologies and directed towards the main reception. Game Noriega.

That was the easy bit. The next thing I had to negotiate was the “Members’ Bar”. Outside this was a list of lengthy regulations and I was pleased to notice that not one of them referred to shirt brightness. Even so, my earlier cockiness evaporated the moment I pushed through the door. It was a pretty unsettling place and I felt decidedly uncomfortable. Although I hadn't broken any of the advertised rules, I was clearly under-dressed and the walk through the bar seemed to take a bleeding eternity. I could feel disapproving eyes staring over their newspapers at my just about scruffy presence. Thankfully I was saved by a smiley face sitting on a bar stool at the other end “Hello you must be Rudy, I’m Charlotte. Why are you looking so terrified?” she said.

The name “Charlotte Cornwallis” might not mean a great deal to most people (and it meant absolutely bugger all to me until a month before) but she’s virtually untouchable at Queens’. That’s because she’s a world champion and not only that, she’s a world champion by holding a tennis racket and there are precious few British people who can say that.

Charlotte’s sport is “Real Tennis”. Not the stuff played outside on grass but the game that started in the 12^th century in France when it was played in cloisters by monks. Not surprisingly, the Pope decided that it was unseemly for monks to be enjoying themselves and the game was banned. It was eventually taken up by the nobility but has perhaps never lost that aristocratic edge to it which is perhaps why it has never caught on in a big way. Another thing that goes against it is that nobody seems to know what to call it. Players of the sport refer to it as "tennis" and they call the more common version  "lawn tennis".  In other countries it's called "jeu de paume". Anyway, I was emailed by the British Real Tennis Association about getting Charlotte on the radio programme I work on but I couldn't get anyone interested.  I kept in contact with her though and she offered me the chance of a  lesson which seemed too good to turn down. I'm more suited to real ale but how often do you get coached  from a world champion?

I had never seen a real tennis court before in all its glory before. In fact the only time I had seen one at all was on television in one of The Three Musketeers’ films. It’s about the same width as a doubles tennis court and maybe about half as long again. The other thing I noticed was that the net was a lot higher than a normal tennis net and it sagged severely in the middle to the point where I wasn’t sure if it had been vandalised or not. One half of the court had been divided again with the back half being a bright green box. There were sloping roofs on three sides of the court (called penthouses ) and a serve had to bounce off one of these and land in the green box to be valid. There are also nets under the penthouses were points can be gained or lost and a huge net that runs along the back of the service side of the court. I stood there taking in the ornate design and decoration. Crowns were painted on the walls. There were intricate floor markings and a feeling of all round elegance. This child-like sense of wonderment lasted right up to the moment when I realized that I was going to spend the next hour running around the bloody place.

It only took five minutes before the sweat was pouring off me and I could feel my shirt sticking to my body. I hadn’t even run around yet. Charlotte stood at the service end and gently lobbed some balls in my direction and my simple task was to return them. In everything I had read about real tennis beforehand, I was told that it was more a game of strategy than energy. It didn’t take long before I realised that this was total rubbish. A Real Tennis ball is made out of cork and bounces in exactly the same way as a brick doesn’t. You have to move towards the ball and meet it in the dead centre of your wooden racket otherwise you have no chance of returning the ball. Get it wrong and it’s like being yorked by Shoaib Aktar with your legs as stumps.*

I think out of the first basket of forty balls I returned about four. We then tried again and I faired much better. Then it was time to return a ball after it’s dropped from a penthouse which reminded me of playing “Whack the rat” at a fairground. Then the torture began in earnest as we tried to play out a game. There’s no “out” in real tennis so every ball had to be run for. I was playing against someone who was younger than me, fitter than me and had twenty years more experience in the game. Just to make sure that things wouldn’t go my way, I got mildly concussed early on when a ball span off the frame of my racket and got me squarely in the forehead. The result was not exactly in doubt.

Despite the exhaustion I actually really enjoyed the experience and would recommend it to anyone to give it a go. I walked out of Queens with a sense of real discovery and made sure I gave a cheery wave to the security guard on the way out, though of course I didn't use all my fingers. Little did I know then that walking anywhere for the rest of the week was going to prove difficult.

The following morning I woke up in absolute agony. I’ve had pains in my body from unexpected exercise before but nothing on the scale of this. Every part of me ached from the neck down and struggling out of bed was a real ordeal – bear in mind I sleep on a futon. Bones jarred with every step I took and confronting stairs was a real ordeal which saw me struggling upwards and downwards with both hands on the same banister. I felt like every part of my body had been battered wuith a mallet. I was still struggling five days later. Having said all that, it really was a lot of fun. If it's good enough for Henry VIII...

*A cricket reference (now outdated) so don't worry if you don't understand it. All you need to know is that if a Real Tennis ball hits you in the shins you may find yourself walking with a limp for the next couple of weeks and have a hole where part of your tibia used to be.

The Wall of Life: Lucca June 2005

I didn't know you could fall in love with a wall. Pisa has its leaning tower, Florence has its cathedral but the distinguishing feature of Lucca is that the old town is totally enclosed by a 4km long example of defensive engineering. It's a staggering achievement. It’s about 20 metres thick at its base and about 15 metres wide at the top, with nine large buttresses reinforcing it at strategic points. It was built in different stages and the city was finally enclosed in the eighteenth century after three hundred years of intensive brick laying and planning. While other city states knocked down and rebuilt walls as they continued to expand, somebody here had clearly decided that things were just about perfect and there was no reason why any further growth couldn't happen outside.

It was a wise decision. As a defence measure the wall was a total waste of time as Lucca wasn’t attacked during that period or indeed the hundred years before most of the wall was built. It’s still an impressive piece of work though and is the defining characteristic of the town. It may have beautiful churches, a square in the design of an ancient amphitheatre and a tower with oak trees growing on the top, but the thing you're going to remember the most is the wall. The locals are clearly proud of it too and have enclosed it a frame of lush green grass. It’s the first thing you see when you get out of the railway station and in the five minutes it took from me to walk across the field and through one of the city gates, I was totally in love with the place.

There’s a lot to fall in love with as well. You could walk anywhere within the confines of the wall in about twenty five minutes. Because of the town being medieval, the streets are very narrow and so it is largely car free. It took me a couple of days of aimless wandering before I came across a traffic light and I found myself staring at this curious anomaly in bewilderment. The narrow streets are linked to a series of squares which are invariably dominated by a church and there are certainly enough of them. While the overwhelming colour of Lucca is terracotta, most of the churches are white and so recognizable from a great distance, as if someone had decided to colour code the city for visitors.

Lucca is very much on the tourist trail but seems to be little more than a gentle diversion from nearby Pisa and Florence:. Somehow, they've managed to crowbar a coach park and bus station just inside the city walls and visitors are decanted at regular intervals to walk around for a couple of hours. They don't seem to stay too long though and by six in the evening the place is virtually deserted. It's a true pleasure walking around at any time but it's particularly wonderful at night when there are fewer people around and the only sound you can hear is your footsteps echoing around as you navigated your way through the orange hued streets. It's truly magical. There is some activity as most of the restaurants seemed to be busy if not crowded. In a truly Italian fashion, the only place where I found dozens of people congregating noisily was on a street corner near my hotel, their focus of attention being the late night ice-cream shop. Bloody sorbet louts.

The city is laid out in a loose grid pattern. The main shopping street is Via Filungo which can't be much more than five metres across. There's a feeling that you could stand in the middle of it and stretch out and touch both sides. I don't recommend it though as I nearly took out a couple of shoppers and a cyclist when I gave it a go. It's not the biggest or smallest street in the city but it is roughly in the centre. As it heads north it gently bends and skirts the Piazza Anfiteatro, possibly one of the quirkier town squares in Italy. It's actually oval shaped and, as the name suggests, it was built on the site of a Roman amphitheatre. While there are a few cafés at ground level, the rest of the piazza is clearly residential. The buildings rise up unevenly to form an enclosed space which gives it a sort of back yard feel and a real sense that you are intruding.

As you may have guessed, the preferred mode of transport is walking so it is my kind of town really. There are very few pavements to speak of so you can just wander down the middle of the roads safe in the knowledge that the only thing to look out for was the occasional mad cyclist. I hired a bike a couple of times and bombed my way through the streets, pedestrians permitting, and threw myself around corners safe in the knowledge that I wasn’t go to coming across a car. If Steve McQueen ever cycled around a medieval town I would like to think to think that I did it like him.

The exercise was clearly needed as there was a fair amount of face stuffing going on. After a couple of nights I decided to join the ice-cream crowd and was constantly being advised on what flavour combinations to try. I don't regard ice-cream as a dessert when I'm on holiday. It replaces my tea drinking habit and it's something to enjoy when I'm having a bit of a break. I may have had a tiramasu a couple of hours ago but ice-cream is different and in Lucca it's spectacularly social. If you haven't stood on a warm moonlit night knocking back a raspberry and pistachio double cone in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, you really should give it a go. If you can chip in with your comments on why Juventus aren't doing particularly well this year, so much the better.

Thankfully, it's not too difficult to walk off all the excesses and this brings me back to the wall. The top of it is wide enough to support a normal sized road but it was decided two hundred years ago that this road should exist for the purposes of leisure only. Cars are banned and now it’s a place where the locals go to exercise. Rarely can people jog and cycle in such a beautiful place. The circuit is largely tree-lined and the type of trees depend on which direction you’re facing. It's a green form of urban planning and if you see the cypress trees you know you’re facing north. There is also a bit of imagination involved when it comes to the buttresses. A couple have been converted into children’s playgrounds and one has a tennis court on it. Similarly, the gatehouses have been altered with one housing the Lucca Bridge and Chess club and another being a very nice bar and restaurant. I've walked around the walls at least twice a day and each circuit is an hour well spent. I never know whether to look at the orange slated roofs and towers of the city or look out across the new part of the town to the mountains beyond.

St. Gellert's Revenge: Budapest February 1996

I’ve never waded through snow before. I’ve walked along its surface and sunk down a few centimetres. Occasionally, it has over flown into the top of my walking boots but I’ve never had to kick my way through the stuff at knee level. Thankfully most of the pavements in Budapest have already been navigated for me and I was able to follow the legsteps (as opposed to footsteps) of others. I was determined that the weather wasn’t going to stop my enjoyment of the city but there was no doubt that it was going to hamper it a bit.

It’s a great city to walk around as well. It was redesigned at the end of the nineteenth century by Baron Haussmann who was also responsible for a fair amount of Paris and the similarities are obvious. It has the same wide boulevards and imposing grey stone buildings that give it a sense of importance and elegance.  This is negated somewhat by the garish neon advertising that’s used to promote Burger Kings and Pizza Huts but the concept of grandeur just about wins out.

When it comes to public transport Budapest is a lot like Prague. There is a Soviet built underground system with a familiar dimpled pattern at platform level which gives you the impression that you’re inside a dalek, while above ground dirty yellow trams plough effortlessly through the snow. The trams are particularly useful as it isn’t so easy to tell the difference between pavement and road. Parked cars look like they’ve been abandoned and there were a couple of occasions when I walked across roundabouts without actually knowing they were there.

Another similarity with Prague is the strange desire to put ugly hotels on the river front. In a city of faded elegance, angular and unattractive concrete blocks sit in prime locations, commanding views over the Danube and to the Citadel on the hill beyond. They also have the added bonus that when you look out of the window you can’t actually see the building you’re staying in. Haussmann would never have allowed it and I’m not sure the town planners of Milton Keynes would either

Thankfully a bit further down river is one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen. It’s the Hungarian Parliament which is rumoured to be the largest building in the country and probably out of proportion for the amount of politicians that use it. I’m willing to forgive it for that though. It’s in the same neo-gothic style of the Palace of Westminster though it’s made of white stone and a lot less gloomy looking as a result. It’s symmetrical with dozens of small spires and arches and with a large red dome in its centre. It sits easily in its own space and thankfully there’s a hotel exclusion zone around it so you can stare at it with an uninterrupted view and marvel at the fussy exterior.

You get the best view of it from the citadel on top of Gellért Hill and it would be a stiff climb to get there at the best of times. Yes, there is a path and there are some steps but there was no way of knowing where they were until I slipped on them. It was akin to mountaineering and I was breathless when I finally made it to the top. I couldn’t enjoy the view straight away as I was hell bent on starting an avalanche to take out an alsatian and its owner. The dog had gone for me on the way up and I think I was on the receiving end of the Hungarian version of “He’s only playing.” It didn’t bloody feel like that to me. The owner wasn’t too receptive to the snow ball I chucked at the dog from close range to get him off me. It worked though and it was worth the earful I received in response. I just shrugged my shoulders and told him I was only playing too.

I’ve got no idea what the man really said. Hungarian is not like any language I’ve ever come across and the only word I’m aware of that’s made it into the English language is “paprika”. I can’t even pick up words that sound like anything I understand. This is a major handicap when it comes to ordering food (where everything seems to be served with paprika). I’ve been forced in restaurants with translated menus and even when the food arrived, I wasn’t absolutely certain it was what I ordered. Equally, the price I paid was only distantly related to what was written on the menu.

Far more disturbing was the fact the food I had had last night was backlashing viciously in the stomach and I had been feeling it all day. My walk was punctuated by quick dashes to the nearest fast food outlet. I didn’t care how much of a blight they were on the aesthetics of the city as long as they had clean toilets. That was fine when I was in the centre of town but there was no such luck on the top of Gellért Hill. The Citadel itself appeared to be closed and I was faced with the real possibility of exposing myself to the elements and getting tracked down by that bloke and his dog.

Thankfully there were signs for a toilet but when I got there it was closed with a padlock. With the strength a bloke can only use when he’s desperate I forced part of the door off its hinges and replaced it carefully behind me. All of a sudden, the views from the hill didn’t seem particularly important but a potential charge of vandalism and assaulting a dog did and I decided that the best thing to do was get off the hill completely. The quickest descent of Gellért Hill was probably done by St. Gellért himself. He was sent to the area to convert the pagans in the eleventh century but it went so badly that he ended up being nailed into a barrel and pushed down the hill that now bears his name. I’m willing to put in a claim for the second fastest descent though and it was done through snow and powered by guilt.

I just chose the nearest path that was heading downwards and at the bottom there was an arched gateway cut into the rock itself. Outside was a small notice stating that this was a church. Apparently it was originally the home of a hermit monk, St. Istvan, who used to cure the sick using the nearby thermal waters. Then in 1924 it became a proper church and was later expanded further inwards. I’m partial to churches, particularly when I’m feeling guilty and was delighted to see that this was open. What was staggering about it was how bright it was. The lighting was discreet and it felt prayerful and intimate. Icons and statues filled the natural crevices and rock formations and it felt special without being overpowering.

For such a beautiful place it has a rather tragic history. It was run by the PauIine monks until 1951 when communist police raided it and condemned the Superior to death. There’s a sad irony to this as the church lies below the Liberation Monument which celebrates the triumph over fascism and was constructed four years before. There was no liberation for the rest of the monks who were imprisoned for between five and ten years. They had an exchanged one extremist political movement for another. The church itself was then hidden behind a concrete wall until 1989 when it was reopened. It would have been a tragedy for it to have stayed closed. There are few buildings that manage to be spectacular and unobtrusive at the same time. After a day of walking, there is no more beautiful place to sit down.

Not Swimming But Drowning 2: Sassari November 1996

I really thought that going swimming was a matter of showing up to the pool with your trunks, your towel and the ability to pay for the experience. Unfortunately I've been proved spectacularly wrong so far. I had to get a student to write a medical certificate for me and now I'd been told that I have to buy a swimming hat. I've never needed one before for the simple reason that I don't have any hair to cover. But rules are rules, even if they're stupid ones and I decided that I'd consult my students and find out if you really do need a swimming hat to go to the pool

I was not looking forward to this. It was a different class to the day before and this lot were unlikely to give me a smooth ride. There are twelve of them and quite frankly the abuse could come from anywhere. I started off by asking them how many people had been examined to get their medical certificate to go swimming. Not surprisingly, none of them had. Then it was time to ask about the swimming hat and you could feel the smirking, let alone see it. I was surrounded by people who were itching to say something but were undecided about how far to take it. The gentle giggling said it all really. I was told though that there was a sports shop down the road from the school and I should be able to pick up a hat there.

In the distant past I was once dared to go into a pet shop and ask for a pelican. Somehow that made more sense than the excursion I made that afternoon to the sports shop. I had hair when I asked for a pelican. The shop assistant produced one of those smiles you get used to if you're a tourist or you've lived abroad; it's the smile that says you're about to get fleeced.

“I've only got one left.” he said, handing me a plastic package. I stared at it in disbelief. I'm not good with colours but I'd describe the hat inside as being “nuclear pink”. It was vivid. It should have been placed in a lead box rather than a plastic bag. I asked if he had any others but he shook his head with the smile still on his face. Lying bastard. I bet he'd had that on the shelf for years and had been praying for someone who didn't have the language to argue to come and take it off his hands.

That evening I decided to try my hat on and it was worse than I feared. In conjunction with my rather white body, it made me look like a fat matchstick. Still if that's what was needed. After the swagger of the previous day I was a bit more cautious when I approached the swimming pool reception. Once again, my form was retrieved and I produced my swimming hat for the receptionist.

“Do you have the shoes? You need the shoes to go from the changing room to the pool.”

Sarcasm travels faster than my ability to translate something sensible. “Do I need a frigging accordion as well?” Once again I felt guilty straight away. She was only doing her job – some might say badly – but she meant no harm. She could clearly see the frustration in my face.

“Do I need anything else?” I asked. She didn't think so. I was rather hoping for something a bit more concrete than that. Things were not go swimmingly at all.

My attempts to go swimming had kept my flatmate Colin (and his students) amused for a couple of days. It has to be said that he doesn't really do sympathy though

“You've got no bloody chance. If you can find flip-flops your size in Sassari, I'll buy you a meal at the 'La Locanda degli Eventi.'”

There's a good chance that he right. I struggle to find shoes in the UK and the idea of finding a pair of size 49 (13) shoes in a town where no-one's taller than 1m 70 (5'6) was always going to be difficult. There were several things in my favour though namely; Sassari has a lot of shoe shops, the town's bowling alley has shoes that fit me, and all the shoes I've brought with me were made in Italy. I'm a determined bloke, particularly if there's a free meal on it.

And so the great assault began. I drew up a plan and the following Saturday I hit the shops. It was torture. The first shop was an indication of things to come. When I mentioned my shoe size the shop assistant exclaimed “Madonna!” and then shouted across the busy shop floor to her friend, “There's a man here with size 49 feet. Come and have a look.” Not only did her friend arrive but so did a fair amount of the customers as well. I was becoming a museum exhibit. Sadly it wasn't the last time it happened that day. I came home a broken man but with a cult following. The offer of a free meal's still there and I'm determined that I won't be beaten on this. It may be quicker though if I just sit back and wait for the sea to warm up again..