Foreign Perspectives

Aside from anything else, one thing that surprises me about this photo is that although I scanned it with a reasonably good scanner for its day, the resolution is much lower than even that of a cheap digital camera these days.

That aside, we’re planning on a trip to Geneva this Friday. As usual, it’ll be “weather permitting” though at the moment the prospects are looking quite good.

You might think that there would be loads to see in Geneva but in reality there isn’t a whole lot. Having said that, what there is, is pretty good in that you get the Red Cross museum, the Olympic museum, etc. courtesy of all the international organisations based there and, of course, there’s the scenery. Oh, and not to forget CERN where Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1990 (that link is to the first ever website). Yes, it’s that recent!

Also potentially on the cards is Lausanne which is about 40 mins up the road from Geneva.

With all this running around Roman remains that we’ve been doing of late, I’m sort-of half toying with the idea of doing a course to learn something more about that era.

As usual, I should never even pick up an Open University prospectus as there are just too many interesting little courses in it which could keep you busy for several lifetimes. Still… their course on Exploring the Classical World would seem to fit the bill perfectly. The only problem with it really is that it’s a 60 point course which requires a fairly full committment unlike the 30 point ones which can be done as a sideline.

Funnily enough for a level 2 course, it doesn’t have any prerequisites as such other than a wishy-washy recommendation to do the Humanities course which I’ve heard, whilst interesting, isn’t worth doing in terms of being a stepping stone to further course.

Everywhere you go in the world today you’ll find a keyboard in the family QWERTY layout. Except in France.

That’s because the French style keyboard that was developed by Dvorak is a second generation keyboard design.

Way back in the early days of typewriters, the keys jammed frequently and to solve this problem the manufacturers adopted the now familiar QWERTY layout to slow down the speed of the earliest typists. Although the early problems were solved quickly enough, the design stuck across the world despite all attempts to update it with a more logical layout.

Meanwhile though in France, Dvorak came along after those initial problems were solved and developed a keyboard layout which equally balances the workload across both hands and thereby considerably speeds up typing. However, although it would obviously be a doddle to change over to that layout these days by simply changing the keys around and using a different driver, I suspect that we’ll be stuck with QWERTY until the day comes when we’re not using keyboards anymore.

We had a really full day in Arles yesterday.

Unlike most of the towns in the area such as Nimes and Avignon, it doesn’t rely entirely on medieval and Roman remains for its attraction as it also has Van Gogh to play with as well. Another big plus point of the town is that all of the attractions are within walking distance so you can cover all the major sites in a day with ease.

If you’re a keen fan of Van Gogh naturally the only place to eat is in the Cafe de la Nuit, isn’t it? It’s still there and decorated in the same colour scheme, but why not eat in the cafe next door and sit just where he was when he painted the other cafe? It’s quite a busy spot at meal times so if you’re planning on doing that, it’s best to get there early.

Within a few hundred yards of that spot you’ll find the Roman arena which is pretty well preserved. A ticket to that includes entrance to the Roman baths.

Sadly you can’t visit Van Gogh’s house as it was destroyed during the second world war. However, it’s now the Hotel Terminus et Van Gogh so you can stay in exactly the same spot as he did.

You need to be pretty organised in packing for a last-minute mini-holiday.

The best plan is to reset the contents of your case shortly after you get home from the previous holiday. That usually amounts to just taking out all the clothing but leaving in all the essentials such as your passport, a few credit cards, driving license, electrical adaptors, and so on.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite so easily done as that if you vary your “holidays” by going on business trips as well as those will generally require a slightly different range of essentials. Likewise, if you constantly go to different countries then things like guidebooks and phrasebooks will, of course, need to be changed.

Still, the principles remain: keep the passport, driving license and at least one credit card in your case and you will probably be able to buy the rest. On the guidebook front, you can keep a very general guidebook in it too eg the Lonely Planet Western Europe guide will cover a vast range of short break holiday destinations.