Caprine Peripatetic Perambulation

A summary of some of the many inane things I've been posting on the Book of Faces.

Having arrived in Budapest, I discovered that I'd accidentally brought a little stuffed goat that Beloved Wife bought for me the first time we visited Cyprus. I took a picture and entitled it "Goats Do Roam".

This is far from the first idea on the blogosphere in which some form of mascot features in travel blogs. Nevertheless, I ended up carrying this little mascot in my backpack throughout my travels around Budapest. It's the alternative to Yet Another View That Looks Like A Postcard and neatly sidesteps the Souvenir Selfie. I don't know why I didn't think of doing this years ago.

Suddenly confronted by some random stranger who demanded to know the animal's name, I blurted out, "Caesar," and now it's stuck.

So the pun works on several levels:-

Goats do Roam all over Budapest, Frankfurt, and the UAE.
Goats do Roam is an acceptable wine, itself a pun on Côtes du Rhône.
Goats de Rome is why he's called Caesar.

Budapest

The window of Bedroom 1 just before the renovation started

IKEA arrived

Budapest and the Danube from the Citadel

Glühwein is basically Christmas in a bottle

Christmas snow outside the Gellert Hotel

Outside the New York Café,
where there are several winged satyrs holding light sconces

And opposite the New York cafe, another satyr

In the central market, USSR-era military hats
that were all Size Tiny

A piper. I briefly busked nearby
and made precisely zero money

And it seems to be cake o'clock

And at Budapest (petting) zoo

Frankfurt

Christmas markets. We went to Frankfurt this year rather than Munich,
and spent a long (UAE National Day) weekend drinking
Glühwein and eating junk

Dubai

One of those 'notorious' Friday brunches

A break from Budapest, and I managed to get the bike out

Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge

I got back from Budapest just in time to be an ADDC marshal. Caesar called shotgun

Caesar became the Finish Team mascot

As the name seems to have stuck, I wonder if I should make him a toga? In time for my next visit to Historical Italy, perhaps.

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These brambles are tasty

Lifted from Rentagoat
(yes, I know goats don't have top front teeth)

For no better reason than it just occurring to me that the long-running children's comedy show Rentaghost (BBC 1976-1984) is ripe for a pun, I made the connection with Conservation Grazing.

That is, using goats to remove invasive plant species rather than pumping chemicals over the plants and everything besides, attacking the plants with whirling blades of death, or killing everything in the vicinity with fire.

The thing is, a Company Song is missing. Until now. The song is sung by a choir of company employees. Well, the last line of the song.

Tune and original lyrics by Michael Staniforth, who also starred in Rentaghost.

If your garden is a shambles, just call Rent-A-Goat.

Are your ditches full of brambles? You need Rent-A-Goat.

We’ll eradicate your kudzu and remove invasive weeds;

It can be verified we don’t use herbicide, so just call Rent-A-Goat.

If your stately home’s a mess you should call Rent-A-Goat.

That poison ivy we’ll address because we’re Rent-A-Goat.

We are quiet while we’re working, and we don’t need gasoline.

We work without a fuss; you’ll barely notice us from Rent-A-Goat.

Have you tried a pesticide with side-effects you can’t abide?

Are you reliant upon high technology?

Perhaps you should take note that by contacting Rent-A-Goat

You can achieve it more environmentally.

There is a goatherd who will stay alert. That’s Rent-A-Goat

Who will ensure your orchids won’t be hurt. That’s Rent-A-Goat.

Now that your land is neat and tidy, recommend us to your friends.

We’ll conservation-graze and we work seven days at Rent-A-Goat.

“Baaaaaaah!”

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Norse saga. Part II - Stockholm Syndrome

Wednesday 07 August

Church, after the rain.

We pretty much blew the entire day on rail travel. After a leisurely breakfast and post-breakfast siesta, we packed and got ourselves to the station in time for the InterCity High-Speed train departing Copenhagen at 1229. The Øresund bridge crossing into Sweden is spectacular. I think the rail runs below the road deck. The train got to Malmö on time, and then stood in the underground station for an hour and a half.

Subsequent delays, including protracted unexplained waits in rural Sweden and on one occasion actually travelling backwards for several miles, meant that the five hour journey ended up taking almost nine hours. At least, when we eventually rolled into Stockholm, the hotel was close to the station and easy to find.

We crawled into our room and then set off in search of food, eschewing Pizza Hut in favour a local steakhouse chain. The first ATM we tried didn’t want to talk to my card, and as the buttons didn’t respond, I concluded that the machine was FUBAR. Another machine in the railway station was much more sensible: it dispensed cash.

Thursday 08 August

First job after a splendid continental breakfast that included bacon, pork sausages, paté, plus the usual cold cuts, fruit, bread and coffee, was to head to the railway station. Having secured our booking for next Wednesday’s trip to Oslo and paid the booking fee, we headed to the bus station (of all places) to confirm our ferry to and from Helsinki, plus shuttle buses to and from the ferry port.

The bus to Skansen, a kind of outdoor theme park of old buildings, living history, and petting zoo, was parked up outside the bus terminal. Beloved Wife made her Fast Talk when conversing with the bus driver, and we were delivered for free outside Skansen about twenty minutes later.

After admission, we checked out the Tobacco and Matches museum that, curiously, made no mention of the negative health effects of tobacco. There was a video on a loop telling the salutory tale of one Ivar Kreuger who basically created a world monopoly of match manufacturing by buying out all his competitors with other people’s money. It all went wrong with the Wall Street Crash of 1929, but to this day almost all of the world’s matches are from Sweden.

Cigarette-making machines.

Guess one of my favourite brands.

 There were some extremely rare goats at the petting zoo. They looked to me like shaggy Toggenburgs, but are a once common but now an endangered breed, apparently. The adults had proper horns and beards, which was splendid.

Lovely beard you have there, ma'aaam!

Sheltering from the rain. Clearly this goat has more sense than the photographer.

Nineteenth-century Swedish farm cottage.

Nineteenth-century schoolhouse and bell tower.

 The weather deteriorated, and we were glad to be able to hide in various buildings and avail ourselves of Living History and shelter. As the woman spinning wool into yarn confirmed, Sleeping Beauty couldn’t have pricked her finger on a spinning wheel: there’s nothing sharp on the device. In Swedish, ‘spinning’ on a wheel and ‘spinning’ using a drop-spindle have different words and the illustrations in books of fairy tales and cartoons by Walt Disney of the spinning wheel are all wrong. It’s a drop-spindle that has a pointy bit that can put you to sleep for a hundred years. Beloved Wife informs me that a ‘Great Wheel’ spinning wheel does have a finger-pricking spindle, but this looks nothing like the now traditional machine.

No sharp things in evidence.

Wooden church - interior.

All the Living History stuff shut down at 1700, just as the heavens opened. It had been trying to rain on and off all day, but was now persisting down. We took a tram back to town. To my surprise, the conductor simply stood near one of the doors, but made no effort to collect any fares from the heaving multitude packed in like sardines.

Hurling down in stair-rods.

When the tram stopped, we headed into a shopping mall for excellent pizza, and then dodged the rain (which had failed to stop) by hiding under shop canopies all the way back to the hotel. Beneath one of the larger canopies, we encountered “Hoola Schoola UK,” which was representing all things British at a local Arts fair.

A small excerpt from the Hoola Schoola.

An early night, then, and plans for an early breakfast and some more sightseeing before the ferry trip. What we actually did was going to depend on the weather.

Friday 09 August

First task after two Breakfasts of Podium Finish was to check out of our room and drop our bags off at reception. Then we headed out in the general direction of the old town. I spotted a shop selling athletics goods and – long story short – managed to find some Vibram® FiveFinger® hobbit feet that fitted me, an exercise that has proved impossible in Dubai. When I wear them it looks like I’ve got toes and not hooves. An interesting feature of the shop was a treadmill with a video camera, so that the customer could capture his walking or running gait and have a suitable shoe recommended.

We dropped my purchase with the rest of our luggage back at the hotel, all of two doors away, and found our way to the originally medieval church where the Swedish royal family is interred. 

Riddarholmen church. A cast-iron spire replaced the wooden one that was struck by lightning in 1835 and burned.

Dress it up with as much gold as you like; an infant's sarcophagus represents something desperately sad.

And then we ran into the Changing of the Guard. The latter took over an hour, and involved a lot of horses and shiny pickelhelms. The Lifeguards include one of the few mounted military bands, apparently.

Someone's been polishing his helmet.

Enter the mounted Lifeguards' military band.

Everything was going so well, then the horse on our far right unexpectedly spooked, and the entire formation collapsed like a card table during an enthusiastic game of Snap.

Having removed the equine mess, order was quickly restored.

The timpanist has to control his mount without using his hands. And the horse has to be very used to loud drumming just behind its ears.

There was now insufficient time to visit a museum, so we satisfied ourselves with the old town streets. I discovered an ingenious book: ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ as it might have been written by William Shakespeare.

Then it was beer o’clock, and just time to catch the fun bus from the terminal to the ferry port.

Having got on board the ferry, we discovered a disturbing absence of aircraft-style seats: we were going to have to pay extra for a cabin. At least the tiny, windowless cabin in the orlop was private, and was somewhere to drop off our luggage. I tried to book a cabin for the return trip, but was told this wasn’t possible and I’d have to deal with it at the Helsinki terminal.

The first few hours of the voyage took us past numerous tiny islands comprising part of the Stockholm archipelago. The ferry went disturbingly close to a lot of them. Presumably the navigation channel was originally glacial: vertical sided and deep. The approach to Helsinki was geographically very similar.

View of Skansen from the ferry.

Pendulous, stormy clouds over the Stockholm archipelago.

Waterside residence.

The ferry was crowded, in particular by excessive numbers of boisterous and girlsterous brats. We booked places for the buffet on the third and latest sitting, but still ended up right next to a horde of screaming rugrats. However, the food was plentiful and generally excellent, and beverages including beer and wine were included in the price, so that was a bonus.

We spent the weekend in Helsinki, and caught the overnight ferry back to Stockholm on Monday afternoon.

Tuesday 13 August

The ferry docked on time at around 10am in Stockholm. The fun bus transported us back to the terminal, and we located and checked into our hotel. Then we were off for some Culture.

Palace guard.

No idea who this is, loitering just outside the No Pictures zone.

The Royal Palace admission allows access to four separate exhibitions. Just don’t show up at noon, because that’s when they’ll be Changing the Guard and access to the Palaces will be blocked by horses.

The Treasury is in a dungeon, and contains the Swedish crown jewels. The Royal Apartments are where the Royals used to live, and where they now have banquets and accommodate other Royals who may be visiting. I was completely Baroqued out at the end of that part of the tour, and so it was immediately on to the Three Crowns museum, a tour around the fifteenth-century cellars, two floors below present ground level. This part of the exhibition showed how the royal palace developed from about 1100AD until it burned down in 1697 and was rebuilt to the current layout. The old vaulted arches remain below the new stuff. There are alarming cracks in some of the brickwork.

A final exhibition, King Gustav III’s Museum of Antiquities, houses Roman statues, nicked from Italy in about 1750. This is, apparently, one of the oldest museums in Europe that is open to the public: quite a revolutionary idea when it was introduced in the eighteenth century.

One huge disappointment with the Royal Palace was that photography – not just tripods or flash – was forbidden.

Le déluge

Dodging the heavy rain showers, we made our way back into town. It was well past beer o’clock by the time I spotted The Bishop’s Arms. This is a fake English pub, replete with fake exposed beams and plastered with too many horse brasses, but contained a choice of real English ale on handpull as well as the normal enormous choice of lager, and a massive choice of whiskies. So we stayed for food too. Three 500ml ‘pints’ of Charles Wells Bombardier. Ahhh! And not very much more expensive than a bar in Dubai. I was later assured by a friend on Facebook that I could have done a lot better than Bombardier, had I only looked. Oh well; too late.

Après le déluge

Beer o'clock.

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From caprine to cervine

My Blog List includes a web diary set on a tiny goat farm in Washington State. I’ve been following this charming, sometimes hilarious and occasionally poignant blog for a couple of years, and Beloved Wife suggested that perhaps we should visit. "You know you want to." 

It was one of those ‘chance of a lifetime’ opportunities. We were already on the Pacific coast of the United States and heading north towards Seattle.

An evening of on-line research zoomed in on more-or-less the area, and Google Street View gave me a pretty good idea of what the ZIP code actually looked like. The alleged location was given to Clarissa, and we set off.

A bonus was to cross the Tacoma Narrows. There are now two bridges there. This is the site of the famous “Gallopin’Gertie”, the first suspension bridge constructed over the Narrows. Its fame, or rather, infamy comes from the way in which the bridge deck behaved in windy conditions, and ultimately brought about the structure’s collapse in November 1940, barely four months after completion. Salutory lesson for civil engineers 101.

The new bridges are wider and were designed to resist aerofoil effects.

Tacoma Narrows: Westbound is free; Eastbound costs around five  bucks.

Anyway, the Key Peninsula is a beautiful as I’d anticipated. The geography of the area is a complex layout of peninsulas and islands, and if I lived here I’d own a boat in a heartbeat. There are so many inlets and coves to explore without having to venture into the Big Wide Ocean.

Waterfront properties on the Key Peninsula 

Clarissa, clever black box that she is, led us directly to Herron Hill Dairy. The sign on the gate was a bit of a giveaway. We drove into the yard and I introduced us to the Goatfarmer. She’s the one who types “This Goat’s Life” because the actual author has keyboard/cloven hoof interface trouble. After friendly introductions and chat, Beloved Wife and I were introduced to the herd. Everyone was hiding languidly in the shade. Apparently, this part of Washington hadn’t seen a spot of rain in over a month and the high temperatures were becoming irksome. The goats seemed pleased to see us, even though we had quite by accident failed to bring any ginger biscuits – apparently a caprine favourite.

No ginger biscuits, I'm afraid.

Beloved Wife is now convinced that goats do not necessarily stink to high heaven. The small ones at least are wonderfully cute. Check out the minuscule Crumpet, the Most Famous Goat in the World. I have, in front of witnesses including the Goatfarmer, been granted full and irrevocable permission to keep “three small goats” when we finally get to Cyprus. This always was the plan, but Beloved Wife’s concerns regarding the delicate aroma of capric acid have now been proved unfounded.

La Manchas have only vestigial ears

The minuscule Crumpet, the Most Famous Goat in the World

A big thank you to the Goatfarmer for her hospitality, and also for the great honking slab of goat halloumi that we fried in butter and lemon juice a couple of days later. It was most excellent. And thanks to the herd for not misbehaving in a manner that would have put Beloved Wife off goats for all eternity. I was relying on you!

At Herron Hill, all the goats are de-horned. But they still headbutt.

Just for grins

After we’d wasted enough of the Goatfarmer’s time, we said our thanks and goodbyes and headed off towards Seattle. Clarissa mysteriously sent us further north than I’d been expecting. As we rolled up to the kiosk to pay our ferry fare, the woman taking the money remarked, “Navigating with GPS, eh?”

How did she guess? We didn’t care; an hour or so taking in the sea air made a refreshing change from being cooped up in an air-conditioned box.

Car ferry. Seattle is behind that ridge.

It’s always useful to have a target, and my target was the Utilikilts shop in Seattle. According to the website, this would be found at 620 First Avenue. But there was a huge gap in the numbering and the target area was full of Seattle Mariners’ stadium. Worse, there was a match on, and all parking was from $30 and upwards. No, there wasn’t any discount for visitors from out of town who weren’t interested in baseball. (I had to look that up, having no idea which ball game to mention). After an unscheduled exploration of the hills of Seattle, we discovered that the rounders pitch was on First Avenue South, and we’d been looking in the wrong place. Thereafter, things started looking up, starting with covered parking for $5 only two blocks away from the kilt shop.

Gentlemen's outfitter, with free beer if you ask nicely.

I only wanted to grab some more business cards and possibly a new belt, but the shop staff and mostly Beloved Wife rather encouraged me in the direction of a new kilt. Happy Birthday, Mr Goat. Seems my existing one has stretched with wear somewhat, and I needed to get a slightly bigger version. I got my new belt too. Very fortunately, I remembered something from the website about sharing a beer. When I invoked the offer, they had one beer left, so we shared it. 

The afternoon was wearing on, and Beloved Wife wanted to visit Pike Place Market which was about six blocks up the road. By the time we got there most of the market stalls were clearing up for the day, which was an unfortunate side-effect of driving all over Creation, visiting goats and looking at kilts. Ah, but a small shop selling kitchen porn was able to supply the doughnut cookie cutters that Beloved Wife had been searching for.

Pike Place.

Seattle: The docks and the stadium.

The allure of Japanese food beckoned us into the world’s seediest-looking café. The guy behind the counter, who could have been George Takei’s twin brother, welcomed us in and we were served flame-grilled meat in Japanese teryaki sauce on a bed of rice for almost no money. It was possibly the best meal we had in the States, in the nastiest café with the most primaeval toilets.

Seattle: Old and new.

Seattle street. Everyone must have gone to the ball game,

We recovered the car from the now locked underground parking by visiting a nearby bar as advised by the sign, and obtaining the passcode. Then we made our escape from Seattle before the ball game finished and 100,000 sports-fan motorists vomited forth on to the highway. Heading east along the I-90 through the picturesque Cascade mountain range, we enjoyed the breathtaking scenery. In the winter, of course, the road would impassable without all wheel drive and snow chains. 

What of the 'cervine' bit in the title? Hadn't we had enough of cloven-hoofed ruminants for one day? Apparently not: seventy or so miles east, and in the dark, Muggins hit a deer. Our best guess is that it was standing in the middle of the road looking at the oncoming headlights and didn’t see or hear the Dad Car sneaking up behind at 25 miles per hour. Bambi ran into the Toyota, left a dent, and then scampered off into the woods. Dang!

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