Welcome, the game is ”find the train”

OK, we know you are a little tired after your journey, we know you are a little stressed when you arrive for the first time in a new location, we know that we must guide you. But Brussels Airport has chosen to entertain you. There are just enough signs indicating where the railway station is so they can point out that they have done their job. But there are not enough signs so you can relax, follow he signs and arrive. If you follow the signs, we will even send you over an underground parking, barely lighted and with a smell as if there was a rock concert here yesterday. It’s a well kept secret that you can reach the railway station from within the airport without going over this parking. We love to make it a little more excited for you. No thanks, happy we could make this different.

Welcome, we don’t accept your money.

Most airports I have been to, and there are a lot, have an automated system to distribute tickets for public transportation. One can pay with cash or the major credit cards. Instructions on the terminals, as well as indications to where these terminals are, have been done with very clear pictograms, and in most airports, staff will be present to assist travelers. In New York for example, you will find on any given day about 5 to 10 staff in any of the airtrain-stations, ready to assist travelers in a very friendly and efficient way.

Well, we give you the choice in Brussels: You can get in line for a ticket, there are two windows, but only one is open. You will be serviced by a person that is barely speaking English and that treats any of his customers like they are to stupid to be walking the face of the earth, let alone his train station. Or, you chose the (yep: 1!) automated terminal. But if you had hoped to pay by cash or credit card here, you can get in the queue for the angry man, as in Brussels International Airport, this terminal only takes the local debit cards (bancontact/mister cash) supported by the local banks.

Welcome, figure out where you must go yourself!

There is no staff here to help you, because in the minds of the Belgian Railroad you are able to figure out the information on the yellow paper sheets that you might or might not find in the stations. If you pick the wrong ones, you will be looking at the timetable for the weekend if you are here on a weekday. If you happen to ever come in Amsterdam-Schiphol, you will find a display with all locations and what trains will bring you there. We Belgians believe that this is an underestimation of your brainpower, and we turned it in a little quiz. Enjoy: you have one chance in three to end up on the right platform. Once you have gambled well here, get ready for Brussels North station, where hitting the right platform is one out of twelve. The pro circuit, as you can see.

Welcome, don’t carry to much stuff

When I travel, I do carry some luggage (that is, if the airlines are not losing it). In Brussels airport, the national railroads have decided not to install elevators (lifts) to the train platforms and to block access for trolleys on the stairs. So, welcome dear traveler with luggage. See how you get to the train. don’t count on us for helping you. We’ll be monitoring you trough the camera-circuit and deliver the best of your struggle with luggage on our youtube channel one day. But we are not trained, nor have the genuine helpfulness in us to resolve this…

Welcome, show your tickets please, you thief!

So you have loaded all the luggage on the escalator and by risking life and limbs, you have made it to the bottom of the stairs and are ready to enter the platform. You would have hoped so, but the NMBS/SNCB (national railroad company) thinks the queue and the stairs are not enough humiliating and annoying you. You will now be checked to have paid the extra fee to use these great accommodations. OK, you lost me, so let me explain. When the Belgian government, the airport management and the railroad company set together and figured out that there could be some people taking trains in the airport, they decided to charge a special fee (diabolo, nomen est omen) for all passengers boarding or leaving a train in this railway station. And in stead of providing staff to help customers buy tickets, they have send 4 of their most incompetent, unfriendly and unilingual staff (they can’t even say please in our local languages, let alone in yours…) to see that you are not cheating this extra fee for the great service you are receiving.

Welcome, learn Dutch, now!

Some train staff will, once on the train, explain their welcome, the procedures and the next stops in four languages. They do exist but are extremely are rare. But they are in breach of the Belgian Legal system that doesn’t permit them to use English in official communications. And they are not even supposed to speak English. But rest assured that the Belgian railroads are committed to deliver you first class (!) service when visiting our country… As the airport is part of the Flemish community, one is not supposed to speak another language.

Welcome, our architect hates you… and us…

The railway station has been built taking into account the mission that not one person should feel comfortable here. And they succeeded. But for those that would have a sense of comfort after all, staff has been doing some reconstruction works since this station opened. So if you can stand the looks, they give you the noise of drills… We are all equal here: let the wait for the train be unpleasant for all. Those of you that have had lounges or even just enough sitting space while waiting for a train, note that we do things different…

Note as well the absence of any staff once you are on the platforms. You are on your own now!

Welcome, we have classes on our trains!

OK, even if the crappy compartment you are entering in is the most dirty one you have ever seen, beware: if it has the number 1 in it, or a yellow line on the outside: you are in a first class compartment. No, they have no internet here, of power plugs, or clean seats, or friendly people. But it is different, so you pay more…

One of the staff I met on a train and with whom I discussed this issue, said to a set of tourists that she found on the 1st class with a 2nd class ticket: “You can stay if you pay” …

Welcome, don’t carry to much stuff (2)

The airport express baggage space...

Hey, after you have made it to the train, figured out that you are in the right class, you will find that this train, called airport express, has no room for luggage. The Belgian Railroad company must have been thinking that people coming to or leaving from an airport come there to visit the airport building itself, not to travel. So why provide trains that can accommodate all of your stuff? If you are lucky, you will even encounter one of their staff telling you that your luggage can not stand in the location where you put it, becoming deaf and ignorant when you ask where to put it…

Welcome, learn Dutch or French in 15 minutes!

So when you leave the airport, all of a sudden there is no information available in English anymore. Not on the signs, not in the announcements on the train. The man or women controlling your tickets is not supposed to speak English, but I must say that they have learned to explain that this is first class and that you should be in first in English. But explaining you what trains to change to get to your destination is part of the future learning program, if any.

Welcome, note that “express” is not fast

So this great train you are taking is called an Airport Express. That’s why they make it wait as long as possible in most stations it passes. If you happen to go to the airport and passes Leuven with this train, the “express” will stand still for about 10 minutes here. If the shop owners in Leuven would be able to serve coffee in under 10 minutes, you could have get some. Too bad.

Welcome, and enjoy your stay!

But, let this not  stop you from experiencing the great nation with no service: Belgium . The motto is: trek uw plan, tirez votre plan, help yourself.

If you would have hoped that NMBS/SNCB is reading these kinds of blogs and trying to improve, I must sadly inform you that this blog is not in a language their staff is supposed to understand…

Yesterday I went out and bought this small USB-stick-sized device: a PhotoTrackr from Gisteq. Bought it at a shop and only looked at their website later. (If it would have happened the other way around, I would never have purchased from these guys. Their website is filled with 404-not found pages and the functionalities are not working in Firefox.)

But fortunately, the device and the software has been designed by their better team…

The PhotoTrackr Device

The box contains a small CD, the device itself, a (= 1) sheet of paper with setup instructions and a cord to carry the device.

When the software is setup, you will find out that the installed version is not supporting RAW-images by default. That requires an upgrade to the “professional” version. Painless paypall payment of about 16Euro/19.90USD and the software is complete.

The user manual for PC is the recto side of the sheet of paper in the box, the Apple manual in on the verso side.

The use of the device is plain simple.

• The GPS charges the battery using the USB-port of a computer.
• Before starting – time on the device MUST match time on the camera. Matching means, to the second…
• Once unplugged from the computer, the device LED goes to a blue, solid light whle searching the GPS signal
• When a signal is found, it starts blinking blue slowly, recording data. As line of sight is required it stopped working when I put it in my pocket. The lanyard-alike item that comes with the device seems the best way of carrying it. I might hang it to my camera backpack in the next days and see what results that will give me.
• At a certain point, you can push the button on the device and mark that location
• And you can take pictures, while the device is on and with you…

Once back at the desk, you can upload pictures as you do normal (I use Adobe Lightroom). Then you start the Gisteq software, and import the logs from the portable GPS. Next you point to the folder(s) where the images are stored, and the software adds the correct metadata for GPS in every of the images. Nice to have is a map (powered by Google map) in the application that shows your track and the images. The GPS data is compatible with photosites such as Flickr and Picasa.

For me this is the timesaver of the month.  55Euro for the device and 15 Euro for the software upgrade, 70 Euro well spend. Let’s hope the guys at Gisteq use some of that money to fix up their buggy website.

Our last morning had the sadness of a near departure in it. The indian chef even managed in serving eggs benedict with a hollandaise that had failed. It felt like only a couple of days since we arrived in Auckland, and now the adventure came to an end (for this episode!). We loaded our luggage in the car, and went off for the Christchurch airport.

Computer says no…

If you ever would like to have a day filled with fun and joy at low expense, go and ask something at the people of Budget Rent A Car. Our agency had booked and prepayed our car with them. So when we entered it back, filled with gas and without any damage to the car, we were a little surprised to be presented with a bill. The amount to settle was rather limited, but still we felt like this was incorrect. The lady at the counter and her male colleague (presumebly a trainee) could not explain where the amount came from and went to see their supervisor. He/She (never seen that person, residing in a backoffice – if (s)he even existed) informed us via the agent that we had to pay and extra day, because we picked it up at 9 o clock in Auckland and it was now a couple of minutes over 9, and we had to pay the full day. But, as we had rented for a month, Budget would wave the extra day. Wooow, so we have had 10 minutes free use of the car, thank you gentle people… But now the agent had to correct the amount on the bill. So after a lot of frustration, we had 4 (yes, four) of these agents trying to correct an invoice. The system at Budget must be very solid in not giving money back. It took them another 15 minutes to get this sorted out and corrected. And it all is the computers fault sir. Yes, thank you and bye bye.

The scales

So, now that we got rid of our car, we could get our boarding passes. As we had four segments in front of us, with 3 different airlines, we could expect the worse. Especially as the first segment is with Air New Zealand, where the weight limites are stricter than with Cathay Pacific and British Airlines. Even after we shipped some of the stuff home by mail, we still had a lot with us. So we had a second supervisor-intervention in the same hour. Fortunately, here the pragmatic kiwi-spirit and the gentle customer-service of New Zealand Airlines guided the decision to accept all luggage. And on to security we were.

Much to our surprise, there was no queue at the security and we encountered agents that were doing their jobs correctly, but in a friendly way. I still wonder why the TSA in the USA has to make security such an unpleasant experience, when you see that most other nations enforce strict security on airplanes without being rude to passengers. The security people at this airport knew what delivering a service meant.

Since my last flight on Song Airlines, in 2007 or 2008, I did never enjoyed watching the security videos on airplanes anymore. But the people at Air NZ  have made thair movie with the national rugby team featuring in it. It’s the first security video that I went looking for on youtube (and found it!).

When arriving in Auckland and leaving the country, the friendly immigration officer sees our Belgian passports and strats discussing the victory of Kim Clijster in the Australian open.

The journey

1. Christchurch (CHC) – Auckland (AKL): 321 KM – 1h 20minutes
2. Auckland – Hong Kong (HKG): 9641 KM, 11h 20 min.
3. Hong Kong – London (LHR):  9124 KM, 13h 20 min.
4. London – Brussels (BRU): 349KM: 1h

A long journey, with lots of layovers. Thanks to frequent flyer status, we could use lounges and showers in Hong Kong, and thanks to Cathay Pacific for the inflight battle ship (zeeslag), that can be played by two passengers against each other. And may be one day, the people at FlightCare and Aviapartner will manage to get the luggage out and in the arrivals hall within half an hour. Now we had to wait 45 minutes – again!

The change

• Brussels was 30 degrees less than Christchurch. A t-shirt and a small jacket clearly could be considered as underdressed;
• After a month in clean air, we arrived in smog-alerted Belgium;

…but we were are happy to be home again! Now we can start saving and planning  for a new trip, not sure where we go next time however

PS: those of you that enjoyed my New Zealand travel journal: all my posts from the New Zealand travel are at http://blog.blanquart.be/category/vrije-tijd/travel/newzealand/

The pictures are on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kblanqua/sets/72157624945452856/

When we had breakfast in our (not so) luxury B&B, Vicky and I went for a hike on Mount John, near Lake Tekapo. The air near this lake is so clear that the university has installed and observatory on this mountain. We hiked the 300 meters in altitude in just under 30 minutes – seems this month has helped my poor condition to get a little better. We had a coffee in the observatory (windy place!) and headed back to the village. Picked up some pie at the local bakery and drove off, direction Christchurch.

Motivational message

In Geraldine forest, we had our picnic – and figured out that the bakery was not only selling fresh baked stuff…

Our last B&B for this trip is the very lovely place: Charlotte Jane. With aperitif and canapes, we enjoyed the last afternoon in the sun (25c) and visited the local italian for some great and food and wine.Christchurch is the city that has been struck by that earthquake last year, twice. Some places in the city still have signs thereof, but much to our spurprise there are only limited of those locations. Seems this city has done all it can to get on with business.

The knowledge that we would have to end this great trip made us enjoy that last evening even more. But all good things will come to an end: tomorrow is the big journey back. But more about that in a next blog!

We left Dunedin, after Eva treated us with another great breakfast and even gave us some bite to eat for down the road. Dunedin is not only famous for its yellow-eyed penguins, but for its steepest street in the world too. Eat your heart out, San Francisco: here is Baldwin Street, Dunedin.

Baldwin Street - Dunedin

After some two hours driving, we arrived at the Mouraki boulders. Stones that have been formed over the past centuries in a shape that is about round. Next time, we will get here at low tide, but even now we had some great shots here:

Mouraki - boulders on the beach

Later in the afternoon, we arrived in Lake Tekapo. The lake has this great color:

Lake Tekapo

The turquoise blue colour of Lake Tekapo is created by what seems to be called rock flour: the glaciers grind rock into fine dust. These suspended particles in combination with the sunlight create Lake Tekapo’s unique water colour.

Our Bed and Breakfast, the Lake Tekapo Luxury Lodge, was not luxury at all, and we had the most unfriendly host in all our stays in New Zealand. Can someone please help this women to get rid of an obvious vinegar addiction? To find more funny (but accurate) descriptions on these wannabe lodge-owners, check their tripadvisor comments. We will stay here one night, and have no urge whatsoever to extend our stay here.

First stop: the post-office. Vicky tries to keep me away from bookstores, as she know I will be unable to get out of there empty
handed (especially when they have great old books in the secondhand store, or when coffeetablebooks of nice photographers are in store) I will have to join Books Anonymous when we get back home… Long story short: we had accumulated too many books in the last weeks of travel to allow our airplane home to even lift off. Kiwipost took a little under 10 kilos of books from us and promised to ship them home. Once the books where on their way, we went shop-browsing. First stop: the bookstore

In our travel, we have noticed a lots of qualities in the kiwi lifestyle. But there are some flaws as well. A decent cup of coffee is hard to find. Most coffee will lack any taste as if it was a variation on tea or it must have been made before the settlers arrived on these islands and has since then been cooked so it would be bitter. Some of my friends have strong comments on Starbucks, but in New Zealand that’s one of the few places where the coffee is brewed decently. Vicky and I enjoyed our cup of the black gold.

Dunedin is a rather small city, but the railway station is one of the nicer buildings we have seen here. Next time, we plan on taking the train here – now we just enjoyed the architecture and the mosaics here. On our way back to the hotel we found a nice vegetarian restaurant: Potpourri. After a very tasteful meal, it had started raining in town. We had to head back to the lodge, to be ready for a nature discovery on the Otago archipel, near Dunedin. But first a small stop at the bank, paying my speeding ticket .

Our first stop on the archipel was a wading water, where we met the first couple of New Zealand birds. I was a litlle frustrated since the rain made making decent pictures a little harder than I would have hoped. But the views we had on the birds where magnificent. We even had a close look at the Royal spoonbill (lepelaar), that we had seen breeding yesterday on a rock in the Catlins. We then went on to the only breeding place of Royal Albatrosses on mainland in the world. This time of year is the hatching season, so we had a close look on the breeding parents. The one chick that was born earlier that week was kept out of sight by the parents. We never have seen such majestic birds before. In flight that is, because landing is not their strongest point: young birds will depart from the cliff without so much as even a test-flight and not touch land again for the next five years .

In these years, they will fly the sees between the 30st and the 60st parallel – living from the squid they pick out of the water mostly at night. From then on, they will come on their colony once a year to mate, breed and take off for the rest of the year. Amazing creatures – but another species under pressure as well. Many are in trouble as they sometimes mistake floating plastic for squids…

On the way to our next stop, we had the chance to see a couple of other bird species. I am a fan of birds of prey and was very thrilled to see another couple of Australasian Harriers (Australische Kiekendief) at a couple of meters away. On the cliff where we arrived, we had a good look over a colony of New Zealand Fur Seal (pelsrobben). That’s one more species that has been hunted down near extinction, but is on the return in the last years. The New Zealand Department of Conservation has their hands full in this country – I will blog definitely more about them later.

The colony of Fur Seal had several pups amongst them. Next to the colony, a couple of Sea Lions was playing in the water – generating lots of nervousness amongst the Fur Seal. They are on the menu of these Sea Lions…

By sunset, we arrived at a desolated beach on private land on the archipel. All of a sudden, our guide instructed us to stay low. And in the distance we witnessed a Yellow-eyed pinguin coming out of the sea, after a day of fishing. In their typical style, they walked up to their sleeping grounds in the forest. We had them passing us at less than 10 meters distance. A unique experience when in the silence of the evening we heard their little feet in the water on the beach. Still having thrills in my back when reminding that magical moment. These 2 minutes could have made my whole trip.

Yello-Eyed Penguin

A couple of minutes later, we could see the rest of the pack of penguins making it to the shore, we saw one of the chicks of these penguins from a short distance (in a hiding cabin). Soon it was clear why the penguins were eager to get out of the water:

the sea lions had made it to this beach. And a good penguin is part of a healthy diet for a Sea Lion. We could – with our guide – approach later one of the sleeping Sea Lion males. 400 kilos, but they outrun a human on any beach… I had felt safer on other times in my life.

We drove back to the lodge, very quiet after all the beauty we had seen. We slept well and probably had dreams involving penguins and albatrosses. The fact that I had now taken more pictures than I could possibly store on the hard drive of my computer will be tackled tomorrow.

I have more pictures from this day. I will post them on Flickr, in a set with the New Zealand Animals, when I have found the time to convert from Raw to jpg.

Today announced itself as another great day. The view from our Fiordland Lodge onto the Te Anau lake was stunning again.

The view on Te Anau - morning

We would have loved to stay a couple more days on this great place. Both Vicky and I love pancakes for breakfast, and the ones served here were just great.  We met a couple of Dutch people who gave us some good hints and advice for our journey of today, on where to stop – and where not.

Our route would take us today under the 46th parallel, way more south than Vicky and I ever had been before, and probably will be in the next couple of months… The Catlins are a reserve in the south of New Zealand, where we had a great time.

Variable Oystercatcher - Catlins

The problem with driving in New Zealand is that one never stops being amazed at the landscape we drive in. Everywhere you look is beauty – especially in this reserve.

Lighthouse in the Catlins

We made it – later than expected – to Dunedin. Eva, our host, welcomed us in the Fletcher Lodge, not too far from the center, where we fell asleep in seconds. Probably we counted enough sheep during the day…

Route:

View Directions to Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand in a larger map

After a great breakfast in this wonderful Fiordland Lodge, we were of to Milford Sound once more

.

The view in the morning from Fiordland Lodge

We had a lovely morning, but it started raining soon after we hit the road. The road was even worse than yesterday: the rain kept on coming down. The nice thing about that is that all these ad hoc waterfalls in the scenic reserve were fed enough water to come to their full potential. We split tasks: I tried to keep the car on the road, and Vicky told me how nice these waterfalls are

The waterfalls near Homer Tunnel - Fiordland Reserve

We had booked a small cruise on the Milford Sound (a fjord, opening to the Tasman Sea). Despite the rather low visibity we were greated by a very enthousiast guide, Nick. He warned us that we should keep cameras ready and get on the bow of the ship when he told us, as he had met a surprise on sailing in. And yes, we had not left the harbour for more than 20 minutes when he called us in the wheelhouse and we could have a fisrst look at this pod of Dolphins: a mix of Dusky Dolphins and Common Dolphins. The pod remained with the boat for 20 minutes. Some of them even started swiming just in fron of the bow, while the ship was at high speed. Vicky made a small film, so if that has worked out fine, we’ll have it on youtube shortly.

Dolphins in Milford Sound

So you can imagine, this photo-geek standing on the bridge – soaken wet from the rain and the water that came over the bow. Nothing could make me any more wet than I was at that time. We encountered some fur seals on the way back, making a great day complete. We had not seen any of the mountains, but felt we had a great tour with lots of unexpected things happening. This part of the Unesco world heritage has stole our hart, an on a next visit to New Zealand we will definitely make more time in the sounds area.

Today, we were ready for new adventures, after the lazy day we had. At breakfast we met a family of three siblings, traveling with their dad. Nice folks from the USA, too bad we did not stay any longer as I would loved to get to know them better.

Mirror Lakes - between Te Anau and Milford

Our Toyota brought us first to Te Anau, and later to Milford Sound. The weather there was soo bad that we drove back without actually seeing the sound (or better said: Fjord).These Fjords have been created by glaciers, but misnamed to sounds.

We drove back to Te Anau, where we checked in at the Fiordland Lodge, where a great bunch of people greeted us with genuine warmth and interest. A hot coco made us forget the rainy day and the joined effort of Andy, Jonathan, Monique and Delphine at the lodge made it a great evening. The diner was superb, and we had a great night of sleep in a room overlooking the Te Anau lake.

After the great hikes of the day before yesterday, we had yesterday a day of travel. We left after breakfast in Franz Josef Glacier, and needed about a whole day to get to our new destination: Queenstown. It took us so long, because we had such a spectacular places to stop in (I’ll update the pictures soon). Fox Glacier, Haast Pass, Lake Wanaka, Lake Hawea and Lake Dunstan where all as beautiful as they could be. We took plenty of time to enjoy the sights on this very sunny day.

So by the end of the afternoon, we made it to Queenstown. This place seems to live by tourists only. The only shops in town are selling food, trips for tourists, gear for hiking and camping or souvenirs.

Our home for yesterday and today is Browns Boutique Hotel. A nice place at three blocks from the beach. We discussed food with our host. When we mentioned him that we had not seen many places where meat was cooked as demanded, he directed us to this French Restaurant with the Italian sounding name Solera. We had a great meal there and went back to the hotel (uphill, after a good bottle of wine…).

This morning, the breakfast conversation was monopolized by a group of Californian people. Normally, I enjoy a funny and enthusiast start of the day, but this was so loud that Vicky and I could not even have a conversation.But the breakfast itself was another nice cooking. (Must have gained a few kilos by now, with all these pancakes and eggs cooked to perfection here)

I had hoped to join one of the tours that visit all these Lord Of The Ring places in and around Queenstown, but there were more fans in town than expected and all were completely booked . Vicky was smarter: she booked her spa before we arrived here. So I went for a lazy morning in town and met Vicky short after noon. I went for a tour on one of these great jetboat-rides, while Vicky was seaking a good place on the beach.

After all these big dinners, we needed something a little calmer and went for the international standard for a quick and cheap meal: Chinese food. And for desert one of the fabulous ice cones at Patagonia. One scoop was more than enough, even if we would have loved to taste all their flavours!

Queenstown, New Zealand, the 24th of January, 2011