Travel

Well Done, Passport Office

~ Cheryl

I have to go to Canada in March for a conference and to visit some clients. As my passport will have less than 6 months validity left I need to renew it. Any interaction with officialdom is a scary thing for trans people. Last time I needed a new passport I went in person to a passport office with a ton of documentation, just in case. Everything went smoothly. This time I was pleased to discover that the Passport Office actually has a special leaflet explaining the situation for trans people.

Some of the language is a little clunky — I can see the more shouty trans activists getting upset by the term “acquired gender”. However, the process itself seems straight forward. For people applying for their first passport, the leaflet makes it clear than you can get one in your correct name and gender, even if you don’t have a Gender Recognition Certificate (though you will need a letter from a doctor in that case). As for people like me, the leaflet says:

You should fill in the application form using details relating to your acquired gender and reflect both your current name and any other previous names you have used in your acquired gender in section 2. You do not need to include any previous names in your birth gender.

This is good, because the question on the form about previous names is very scary. That comment makes it clear that the deadname is not required.

The leaflet reassuringly makes clear that even if you did have to include evidence of a change of name and gender, this will not appear on your documents. In the FAQs at the end it states:

All records held by Her Majesty’s Passport Office are protected in line with the Data Protection Act. We have protections in place in our policy, systems and procedures to ensure any record relating to a previous gender is only made where absolutely necessary and such records are protected from inappropriate access or disclosure. This applies regardless of whether you have obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate or not.

Obviously there are still issues here. The leaflet is written within the current framework of the Gender Recognition Act. Hence the need for medical evidence of a permanent gender change, and the lack of non-binary options. But given those restrictions it does very well. Which just goes to show what can be achieved if only people care enough to try.

TSA Ramps Up War on Trans Travelers

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The introduction of “porno scanners” that show nude pictures of airport users have provided all sorts of unhappy experiences for travelers. The TSA has tried to change the way the scanners work so that staff have less fun looking at nude pictures of pretty women, but it has been the impact on trans travelers that has caused the most heartache.

Put simply, if the way your body looks under the porno scanner didn’t match the TSA agent’s view of your gender presentation, then you got flagged as an “anomaly” and were required to undergo extra screening. For trans women and non-binary people with penises this generally involved having your genitals groped by some random TSA guy. Because clearly the obvious way for a terrorist to smuggle a bomb onto a plane is to disguise it as a penis which would be detected by a porno scanner. If all of the extra scrutiny caused you to miss your flight, well that was your problem for being weird.

This policy has resulted in a number of deeply humiliating experiences for trans travelers, most notably for Shadi Petosky who is a well-known TV director (her animated kids show, Danger & Eggs, has just been picked up by Amazon for a full season).

So the TSA decided to take action. No longer will the presence of an unexpected willy generate an “anomaly”. Instead it will generate an ALARM!!! Because apparently characterizing trans travelers as dangerous rather than odd is an improvement in the way you treat them, according to the TSA.

All of which makes me rather glad that I’m no longer allowed to travel to the USA. In theory, of course, my body won’t produce any unexpected results under the porno scanner. However, I am pretty sure that the records being held for me by the TSA state that I am trans, and I therefore expect I would be subject to extra scrutiny, just in case. As I’m not a US citizen, I would have no rights whatsoever in such situations.

There’s more on the story at The Advocate, but I note that Shadi has said on Twitter that she has been mis-quoted in the article so please take that into account when reading it.

Haz Car

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Effie

Well, there’s exciting.

One of my cousins was trading up her car and, for reasons that I will get to shortly, the old one had no resale value. So she offered it to me for free. Obviously I had to pay to tax and insure it, and I had to go up to London to collect it, but aside from that no cost.

So this is Effie. She’s a Fiat Punto, and she’s 12 years old, which is almost as old in car years as I am in human years, so I guess we go well together.

Effie has some rather unpleasant scratches down her left-hand side. They are not my fault. They are, however, the reason I got her for free. She’s perfectly OK on the road, but she’s not saleable without a lot of expensive touch-up work. I got lucky.

Of course she’s Italian, which means we have disagreements about motorsport. I have promised not to mention Lewis Hamilton if she promises not to mention Sebastien Vettel. We are happy to support Kimi Raikkonen together. And of course Susie Wolff.

The other notable thing about her is that she has manual transmission. I had not driven a manual in almost 20 years. (I still had my Polo when I was at Worldcon in Glasgow in 1995). I was very out of practice. Thankfully I managed to get her safely home, despite having to spend a ridiculous amount of time on London’s infamous orbital parking lot, the M25.

I wish I had stopped for lunch at London Gateway services on the M1. Twenty-odd miles to the next services doesn’t seem too far when you are barreling along at 70mph, but it is an awful long way when you are crawling in first gear and thinking that it might have been quicker to walk.

On the subject of lunch journeys, I put the radio on, because Effie has… wait for it… a tape deck!

I don’t think I have used a cassette tape this century. I certainly don’t have the means to make tapes. I rather suspect that if charity shops get them donated they just throw them out. I shall have to investigate alternatives.

Anyway, now I need to get some driving practice. I don’t think that will include braving the Bristol traffic for quite a while, though. I might be daft, but I’m not completely stupid.

August Is Cancelled

~ Cheryl

This summer the track work upgrading the Great Western Main Line reaches Bath. This is essential work and should result in a much better train service in years to come. However, there will be disruption. Specifically I will be unable to get to Bath or Bristol by train for the whole of the month of August.

Of course there are the notorious replacement bus services. However, it will take an hour longer each way to get to Bristol. Also, if you want me to arrive at an event in a good mood, and unlikely to throw up on you when I get there, I advise against suggesting that I use them. Short of hiring a car for the month, which I certainly can’t afford, I think it is unlikely that I’ll be attending any events in Bristol or Bath in August. You can all go on vacation, right?

Last Week on Ujima – Amy Morse, Glenda Larke, Bicycles, Art

~ Cheryl

I did manage to get a radio show done last week. Despite everything, I think I did OK. Here’s what went down.

In the first half hour I welcomed local author, Amy Morse. We had a lovely chat about starting to build a writing career, social media, crowdfunding and all that stuff that many of you will be familiar with.

That was followed by the second of the interviews I recorded at Worldcon. This was with Glenda Larke. We talked quite a lot about living in Malaysia and Tunisia, and how this has influenced Glenda’s writing.

You can listen to the first hour here.

The second hour began with a discussion of cycling in Bristol. It featured Celia Davis from the city council, and our front of house manager, Frances, who does actually cycle. You know me: if I have a bike I want it to have a motor.

Finally we had a lovely bunch of people in from the Bristol Biennial arts festival, which was running all over the city last week. I wish I had been able to go to see some of the installations and performances.

You can listen to the second hour here.

Post-Finncon

~ Cheryl

Today we traveled back to Helsinki from Jyväskylä. As usual, my Finnish friends insisted on showing me some of the best parts of their beautiful country.

The day began with breakfast with Irma at a cafe on a place called Women’s Island. I have no idea where the name came from, but the island is in part of the network of lakes and waterways that surrounds Jyväskylä. There are a couple of hydro-power stations on the island: an old one which is now a bat sanctuary, and a new one that actually provides power. There is also a large lock that we got to see in operation as a Finnish family on a boating holiday came through while we were looking around.

While we were eating a red squirrel wandered into the cafe gardens. Wisely it wasn’t going to let the very large cat get too close, but Paula managed to sneak up and get a good picture.

Red squirrel

In the afternoon we took the scenic route back to Helsinki. The road Otto took ran along a narrow ridge between two lakes and had some magnificent views.

Back in Helsinki we checked out some of the new construction by the railway station. It is mainly offices, but several of the buildings have restaurants on the ground floor. A place called Eatos doesn’t sound very promising, but Otto had seen it recommended in the Helsinki Sanomat so we checked it out. The food was seriously good. So if you want Mexican food in Helsinki you now know where to go.

I’m flying back to London tomorrow and will be offline most of the day. Then it is back into the Ujima studio on Wednesday, for which I have an interview with Tobias Buckell.

Liverpool Wrap

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Last night I met up with Alan Moore’s daughter, Leah. She and her husband, John Reppion, have been at many of the same conventions as me over the years, but we hadn’t seen each other much since they acquired a pile of sprogs. John kindly babysat for the evening so that Leah and I could have a girls’ night out on the town. We avoided the town center, which would have been packed with gloriously painted Liver Birds in their regulation 8″ heels and military grade perfume, plus hordes of soccer fans getting tanked in anticipation of another glorious defeat for the English team. Instead Leah took me on a pub crawl around some of the better watering holes of the city.

There’s not much to report on that, though I did grab a quick interview with Leah about Electricomics which I will podcast in due course. I note that while her dad is the figurehead for the project, Leah is the project manager. Also she and John have written a science fiction series, Sway, for the project which will be illustrated by Nicola Scott.

The only other thing I want to mention is that we did, inevitably, talk about LGBT history. Leah reminisced about when her dad was involved in AARGH (Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia), the anti-Section 28 campaign. On a London march she and her sister, Amber, got to carry the banner, and met a tall and glamorous lady called Roz Kaveney who made a striking impression on the girls. Small world, comics.

This morning I’m planning to leave my suitcase in Left Luggage at Lime Street (yes, they have one) and take a look around the Walker Gallery, in particular the Grayson Perry exhibition. After that it is off home and back to audio editing.

I Love Liverpool

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Yeah, OK, there’s the Adelphi, but I am trying hard to block that from my mind. Actually it has been quite a while since I was here. The last time was in 2004, when I see I was a bit rude about the local wildlife. Much has changed since then, particularly around the Albert Dock area where museums have been springing up like mushrooms after a wet autumn night. They have the Tate, of course, and the Beatles Experience, but now they have so much more.

One of those new places is the Museum of Liverpool were the conference I am attending is being held. It opened in 2011 and is seriously impressive. I spent a bit of time wandering around today, mainly taking train porn pictures for Kevin. There’s also a Maritime Museum, and somewhere a Slavery Museum (something Bristol should have too). You could spend a week here just doing museums and art galleries.

But the reason I like it here is that Liverpool is its own place. It has no truck with Englishness and Respectability. Liverpool does what Liverpool wants to do, and does not care if the rest of England looks down its collective nose at the city as a result. Sometimes that means doing amazing things like the April Ashley exhibition (of which more later). Sometimes it is just being daft for the heck of it.

So, for example, in Albert Dock I found a Yellow Submarine. You can rent rooms on board. It is moored between “The Titanic” (which is gracefully sinking) and a purple-painted barge which claims to be “The Joker” out of Gotham City.

Liverpool is also the only place in the UK which, yesterday, was not plagued by free copies of The Sun. Murdoch’s flagship muck-raker is afraid of Liverpool, and with good reason.

I wish I had more time up here. I want to see all these museums and art galleries. Sadly my life has just got stupidly busy (again) and I have to go home on Sunday.

Yesterday on Ujima: Jamaica, Housing & Racism in Education

~ Cheryl

Not much literary stuff on the show yesterday, but some great content all the same.

Paulette was back from her trip to Jamaica. We spent the first half hour talking about that. With us in the studio was Auntie Pearl from the local Caribbean cricket club, who is also Jamaican. We may have talked about pirates for a while.

In the second half hour Judeline and I interviewed Tony Crofts who runs an organization looking to buy up empty office space and turn it into affordable housing. This isn’t anything to do with the situation at The Fleece which we highlighted last week. Tony’s organization is very responsible, and is in fact looking to take the place of council housing, which has more or less disappeared in the UK. To give you some idea of the problem, I note that the average UK home costs around 11 times the average annual salary (compared to about 3x when I stared work), and that average rents are above what you can afford on an average salary.

You can listen to the first hour of the show here.

For the second hour I handed the mic over to Paulette who did a wonderful piece on racism in Bristol schools. One of her studio guests had been very badly treated by one school and ended up taking them to an employment tribunal, as a result of which the school was (quite rightly) deemed institutionally racist.

You can listen to the second hour of the show here.

My playlist for the show was:

  • Montego Bay – Amazulu
  • Don’t Stop (Funkin’ for Jamaica) – Mariah Carey featuring Mystikal
  • Burning Down the House – Talking Heads
  • Build – The Housemartins
  • Another Brick in the wall, Part II – Pink Floyd
  • Maggie May – Rod Stewart
  • Baggy Trousers – Madness
  • My Old School – Steely Dan

I did try to find songs that had something positive to say about schools, honest.

The Road to Turku

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The highway from Helsinki to Turku is mainly a view of endless forests of silver birch, punctuated by the occasional lake or farm. However, like any other major road, it has to have places along the way to allow drivers to take a break, amuse their bored kids, and relieve them of their money. We stopped at one such place.

A translation of the name would be “The Greenhouse Effect”, but the literal translation is “The Greenhouse Phenomenon” which is entirely more apt. It might once have only sold exotic greenhouses and other bizarre garden ornaments (e.g. a huge bird bath with a large brass eagle to perch in it), but now it sells all sorts of things, ranging from antiques to costumes. There were double door-sized mirrors in gilded frames; there were kitchen gadgets; there were small statues of singing frogs and a life-size painted statue of Napoleon. You could by a sarcophagus, National Geographic videos, ornamental mushrooms (I would have bought some for Jeff & Ann, but they were rather fragile), or anime wigs. If I had a very large house, lots of money, and no taste, I would have come away with half the stock.

We are now in Turku, and are staying at a Robo-hotel. That means the place is largely automated. When you book you get access codes for your room and the front door. I guess that they still have cleaners, but mostly guests never see any staff. The rooms sleeps four, has a huge TV and free wifi. All very Internet Age.

Arrived in Finland

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Hello, I am here. Here being Helsinki. Yesterday I was in London. Tomorrow I will be in Turku. Thursday I get the ferry to Mariehamn. Bloggage will be limited.

I note in passing, however, that Arlanda airport in Stockholm is not a good place to do international transfers. It is poorly signed, and at one point you arrive at a locked door and have to use an intercom to ask them to send a guard to run terrorization checks on you. This is worrying if you have a tight connection.

The Dangers Of Traveling While Trans

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Every time I have to pass through a border control post into another country, I worry about what is going to happen to me. Most of you probably think that’s daft, but I invite you to consider what is happening to Avery Edison in Canada at the moment.

I get the impression from Twitter that lots of smug, self-satisfied cis people are saying this is all her own fault for having broken Canadian visa regulations, but as my own experience shows, such things are by no means written in stone. Besides, when I got denied admission to the US I was put on a plane home, not flung into prison. There are late night flights back to the UK from Toronto Pearson. I know, I have taken them.

In fact what constitutes a breach of visa regulations is very unclear. When I went to New Zealand for their NatCon prior to AussieCon 4 I discovered that having been denied entry to any other country, for any reason, can be used as an excuse to deny you entry to NZ. I spent a nervous half hour or so on the phone to immigration officials in Auckland (because there was no one senior enough awake in Wellington when I arrived) before being let into the country.

Actually I suspect that most countries allow their border control staff to stop anyone, for any reason, if they want to. They just have to be suspicious of you. The only thing reining them in is the sort of PR storm that is currently going on around Avery. I’m pretty sure that, despite all the documentation I have from the UK, my trans status is on the records that get shared around border control bodies. I am sure because I was asked outright whether I was trans once on entering the US. Lying would have provided justification to deny me entry.

Talking of those papers, they are not worth a damn in another country. Avery has an F on her passport. Canada doesn’t care. They have made their own determination of her gender, by their local rules. That’s a similar situation to this one where two Brazilian trans women have been jailed in Dubai for the crime of “Imitating Opposite Sex”.

I’m not up to date with what is happening in India, but last I saw stuff in the news it looked like that if Kevin and I went there as a couple we could be sentenced to life imprisonment for “homosexuality”.

For everyone out there who is smugly saying, “well Britain is civilized, we wouldn’t do that”, check this out. Britain routinely denies entry to LGBT asylum seekers, even those whose lives will be in danger back home, or who face certain arrest on arrival, because our standard immigration policy is to not believe anyone who applies for asylum on LGBT grounds.

More than once, on returning to the UK from an overseas trip, I have been given a look that clearly says, “If there were some way I could deny you entry to the country I’d do so.”

Travel is scary, every time. The only reason I get away with it is because I am white, middle class, and sufficiently old that my lack of good looks doesn’t raise suspicion. And because I am quite careful about which countries I travel to. I’m not sure that I want to go back to Canada in a hurry.

The Far, Unfrozen North

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Hello everyone, I am in Toronto. The journey went fairly well. The biggest problem that I had was the Tube being down between Kings Cross and Baker Street this morning (which at 8:30am is enough to almost bring London to a halt). Thankfully I had left plenty of time and was able to get to Paddington via the Victoria and Bakerloo lines.

The Royal York is as opulently splendid as ever. However, they are digging a new platform at Union station so the roads outside are pure chaos right now. Thankfully the weather is pretty good. Indeed Kevin says it is warmer here than in San Francisco. Given that I have just seem Amanda tweeting about how cold it is there, I am inclined to believe him. If a Bostonian is discomfited by the cold in San Francisco it must be really cold, not just cold for California.

We have been to Chipotle. There is one just over the road. So I have my North American food fix for the trip. I have a lot I could be doing, but it is gone 1:00am so I’m just going to answer email and watch the cricket.

Fly-By Posting from Brighton

~ Cheryl

Hello world, I am at World Fantasy. It is busy.

Yesterday Kevin and I traveled down here and pretty much immediately got to work. Brit Mandelo and I did an interview with Claire Parker for the Time 4 T show on Reverb Radio about trans people in the SF&F community. Then we had dinner, after which Kevin and I went out on the town for Hallowe’en. Huge thanks to Sarah Savage for meeting up with us and showing us where to find the local drag queens. We missed seeing Paris Lees on Question Time, but my Twitter feed has been full of it and I see at least part of it has already found its way onto YouTube.

The convention seems to be running smoothly thus far. We did have a bit of a fright on our way back last night when a police car raced past at full speed with sirens blazing, but it was headed for the Grand, not the Metropole, so I guess none of the convention attendees has breached any of the stringent behavior guidelines yet.

Railway Mania

~ Cheryl

Yesterday the transport systems in the south of the UK were badly disrupted by weather that was less than mild. It was the wrong sort of rain, and the wrong sort of wind. This was not good, as I had a lunch appointment in Oxford and an afternoon one in Didcot.

The only way we could get to Oxford on time, without spending a stupid amount of money on a peak period open return, was a service that took the odd Trowbridge-Westbury-Reading-Oxford route. This would have been fun train geekery for Kevin, especially as the Reading-Oxford route was on a Cross-Country service rather than FGW. But with all of the disruption our chances of making the trip did not look good.

When we left home, only one leg of the trip was doubtful. The Trowbridge-Westbury service was listed for an on-time departure from Bristol. The Westbury-Reading service was on its way from Penzance and not disastrously late. The Cross Country service was coming up from Southampton and was likely to be cancelled, but there was a later FGW service that would still get us into Oxford on time.

So off we went to the station. When we got there we discovered that the first train we needed had not yet left Bristol, and showed no sign of doing so. The ticket clerk said there was no way we could get to Oxford via Bath (a much more sensible route) before 13:30, which would be much too late. So we bought day returns to Didcot.

While we were buying the tickets, a southbound train pulled in. It would have got us to Westbury on time, but it wasn’t listed on any of the departure boards and the station staff were as surprised as we were. There was no way we could get the tickets issued and get over the footbridge in time to catch it, so we stuck with the Didcot plan.

So off we went to Bath, and thence to Didcot on a delayed London service we shouldn’t have been able to catch, had it been on time. At Didcot we caught a delayed train to Oxford that we also shouldn’t have been able to catch, and whose driver set a new speed record for the Didcot-Oxford journey. As a result, we arrived in Oxford about 10 minutes later than our original plan.

The best bit of the trip, however, was the price. The tickets we had originally planned to buy were off-peak returns, at £55 each. Had we bought tickets to Oxford via Bath they would have been super-off-peak returns at £43 each. The returns to Didcot cost only around £27 each. And returns from Didcot to Oxford were about £6 each. So we ended up with a substantial saving on the fare.

Naturally Kevin was delighted by this piece of railway geekery. He was also delighted to get to have lunch at Pembroke College, where Tolkien taught and various notable people such as Roz Kaveney, Colin Greenland and Charles Xavier have been students. It was a tiring day, especially as we both ended up doing several hours of day job stuff when we got home, but well worth the trip.

Brighton Restaurants – The Wrap Post #WFC

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Over the past few weeks I have done quite a few posts about places to eat in Brighton. I thought it would be useful to do a link post that collects them all in one place for easy RTing. Here you go.

Important: Brighton restaurants get very busy over the weekend. If you want to eat at the place of your choice, book in advance.

WFC members may also be interested in a number of reports I wrote for the online tourism site, IGoUGo, a few years back. Well, over a decade ago… sadly many of the restaurants mentioned are long gone (I particularly mourn Mamma Cheri’s and Coriander) and the West Pier has burned down, but a lot of the history remains:

Croatia Trip Wrap

~ Cheryl

I think I have everything processed now. There is a con report available here, complete with photos of the event.

I should, of course, give huge thanks to everyone involved. To Mihaela, Bernard & Iggy, and to Milena, Marko & family for their hospitality; to Mirko for driving me around; to Igor and his committee for Liburnicon; to Jacqueline Carey who graciously allowed me to share the limelight with her; to Irena and to Žarko who also looked after me at various times; and to SFera for welcoming me to their meeting. I will have news related to discussions there in due course. The whole trip was amazing.

On the subject of SFera, I should note that, despite the club having lots of women members, and being mostly run by women, one of the discussions we had was about whether US writers would refuse to attend their cons due to concerns about sexual harassment. I’ve heard similar fears voiced in Finland. The problem is that what is deemed socially acceptable in a culture can depend very much on cultural attitudes to nudity, and on cultural attitudes to personal space. Finns are used to seeing close relatives and friends naked. Croatians are more touchy-feely than the British and Americans. I tried to reassure them that John Scalzi is a sensible fellow, and will take such things into account.

A potentially more serious issue is that many Croatians still smoke. I was OK with that, partly because it was their homes and their country; and partly because a few days of smoke exposure in Croatia will have minimal effect on my health compared to growing up in 20th Century Britain. Other people may be less tolerant.

Anyway, I had a wonderful time, and hope to be back sometime soon. I also hope to be able to introduce many of you to my Croatian friends at Worldcon and Eurocon next year (and maybe even at Eastercon).

Meanwhile, here are some photos.

[shashin type=”album” id=”62″ size=”medium”]

[shashin type=”album” id=”63″ size=”medium”]

Å pancirfest

~ Cheryl

Yesterday evening we drove about 70km to the nearby city of Varaždin to visit Å pancirfest. The name means “walking festival”, which basically means that it is spread all over town. Let me explain.

The city of Varaždin was almost completely destroyed by fire in 1776. When they rebuilt, the people of Varaždin elected to go for wide streets and large squares (I’d say “plazas”, but that would indicate a preference for the Austrian term, “plaz”, rather than the local word, “trg”, which might not go down well.) Mostly Å pancirfest is like a Christmas Market, and many of the stalls use the same little wooden cabins, but it is spread out all over town with lots of different themed areas. Also there are concerts (Skunk Anansie are headlining), stand-up comedy, outdoor movies, street performers and so on. One of the few remaining mediaeval streets gets turned into an actual artists’ alley.

Mostly we just wandered around looking at stuff, though Mihaela plans to take Iggy back there later in the week because there are some amazing kids’ activity stalls. What amazed me most about the whole thing is that we didn’t arrive until after 8:00pm and the place was still hopping. Those stalls that were closed were ones that were taking the whole of Monday off after a busy weekend.

The majority of the stalls were of a craft nature: jewelry, herbal remedies, fine foods, local spirits and so on. I did, however, detect a familiar scent in the air, and sure enough it was a Lush stall.

Our local guide, Žarko, guided us to a food tent near the castle. Croatians are very fond of their meat. When you order a hamburger here it comes six inches across, and the only standard additions appear to be onion and the delicious local relish, Ajvar, both of which are served on the side. For preference I would have Ćevapi rather than a simple burger, but they weren’t on offer. We did have some splendid cakes, though.

Varaždin is famous for its baroque architecture, and the interior of the castle is apparently very splendid. Žarko tells me that the beds inside are very short because of a local myth that if you slept lying down you might die, so people slept sitting up.

All too soon it was time to head back to Zagreb. We left well after 10:00pm and the festival was still busy.

The Museum of Broken Relationships

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I spent much of yesterday wandering around Zagreb with Mihaela seeing the sights. That included riding the funicular railway and visiting the railway station for Kevin’s benefit. I also got to visit one of Zagreb’s most famous tourist destinations, the Museum of Broken Relationships, which is one of the most bizarre and disturbing museums I have ever seen.

The basic idea of the museum is very simple: people donate personal items that they feel are somehow symbolic of a personal relationship that has ended. They also provide an explanation. The museum then puts these on display. Mostly these are love affairs, though I did spot one exhibit that was a magazine announcing President Obama’s election victory, donated by a dissatisfied former supporter.

There’s a huge range of different reactions to break-ups on display. In some cases you get the impression that the person making the donation is very self-centered. In others you wonder how someone could have been that dishonest and cruel to a person that loved them. In a few cases the donations are deeply moving.

The exhibit that affected me most was a key. It was a large, ornate item, very like the mediaeval keys I saw later in the Arts & Crafts Museum. It was, apparently, one of many gifts given to the donor. The write-up of the entry went approximately like this:

You gave me so much, but you would not sleep with me. I didn’t know how much you loved me until you died of AIDS.

On The Road

~ Cheryl

One thing that Croatia is struggling to come to terms with is traffic. There is a proper freeway network now, which is how come Mirko and I were able to drive to Opatija in around 90 minutes on Friday night. Getting back is another matter entirely.

Mirko warned me that tailbacks of 20km were not unknown on the way into Zagreb from the coast. When I drove back yesterday afternoon with Mihaela, Bernard and Iggy, we started encountering slowdowns 70km out. Bernard wisely decided to take a more scenic route.

This initially led us to a beautiful little motel by a bridge over the Dobra river, where we stopped for coffee. Then we arrived in the city of Karlovac. Sadly we were unable to stop to see the famous castle, and the city itself is still a little shabby-looking after the Croatian army made a stand there during the war.

From Karlovac we headed on to Zagreb but ran into tailbacks on that road, so we took a single-track route through the mountains to the town of Samobor which is a major tourist attraction and is famous for its meringue cakes.

I now have a much better idea of what the Balkans look like. There were some truly spectacular views along the way. Also, anyone who tries to conquer country like that is spectacularly stupid.