A different sort of Christmas scent

I have no idea how this deodorant came to be in my bathroom cupboard. I discovered it while rummaging through various baskets looking - in vain, it turned out - for the replacement roll-on I thought I had laid away ready. I stopped buying aerosol deodorant many, many years ago because of the CFC thing, so that's the first bit of the mystery. There is a clue, though, in the size of this container: it's very small, which suggests it was complimentary. Plus, of course, it's German. 

I haven't been anywhere German-speaking for ages. The last time was just before Christmas 2014, when I did a cruise with Uniworld up the Danube from Budapest. They threw us travel writer freeloaders unceremoniously off the boat halfway through the trip, so we missed out on the highlight of sailing through the Wachau Valley, with its hills, castles and vineyards, and on towards Passau and beyond. Instead, we were mini-bussed back to Vienna to fly home. It had been lovely up till that point, though - despite every day being seriously cold and grey. It was an education in understanding why Christmas in Europe is so much more Christmassy than it is here downunder, with our summer holiday distractions that include, notably, summer. When it's that grey and grim, you really need things like mulled wine, gingerbread and market stalls draped in coloured lights.

Vienna was actually my first introduction to the European Christmas, way back in 1987, when we went from England to Austria. Vienna was certainly gorgeous, but even better was Salzburg, where we spent the actual Christmas Day - plus, more to the point, Christmas Eve, which is more important than the 25th, dinner-wise. We'd got a bit anxious in the preceding days, seeing menus that all focused on the traditional Karpfen - carp, the fish, an everyday fish at that, unlike salmon, say. 

Anyway, we turned up at our Vier Jahreseiten hotel restaurant on the evening of the 24th, dressed up, with our presents, just as all the locals were, picked up the menu - and oh! What a relief! Main course: Englisches Roastbeef! 

Earlier that evening, we'd been to a service in the cathedral, quite a casual affair with a lot of coming and going, and then afterwards trailed behind everyone else to the cemetery, where people were putting wreaths and candles on family graves, and singing along to a live accompaniment of violins and cornets. That was wonderfully atmospheric. Christmas Day itself was anticlimactic - so ordinary that we hired a car and went for a drive, looking for snow and, after deciding that it was cheating to pretend a frosty spruce tree would do, found the real thing on top of a peak that we went up in a gondola.  

It was a lovely Christmas. Which is not to say it's not equally lovely to look out of the window and see this sort of thing:

(None of which, of course, solves the mystery of the German deodorant.)

Auf Wiedersehen

My last night on the ship was broken by a bump in the stilly watches: had to be a lock. And it was, right there outside the veranda window, so close I could touch the concrete, which I did. And then I went back to sleep again until my usual 4am, which has pretty much been the pattern for all of us on this trip. Still think being a travel writer is all fun and freebies? Jetlag is no respecter of Business class, you know.

Anyway, on the bright side, it was literally bright when I opened the curtains. Not actually, you know, sunny, but there was an area of cloud that was less grey than the rest, and it was possible to imagine that somewhere behind it there was the sun, shining. It was a novelty, and a popular topic of conversation at breakfast over the Bircher muesli and eggs Benedict. The other passengers were heading in the afternoon into the Wachau Valley, a section of the Danube with wooded hills, the odd castle, vineyards, and they were pleased to think they might be able to stand on the so far hypothetically-labelled sun deck to enjoy it. But not us: we would be in a minivan on our way back to Vienna’s murk.

In the meantime, though, there was a Benedictine monastery on the top of a nearby hill with a grand staircase, painted ceilings and a lovely Baroque church where an organ played for us. And a Christmas market - but you probably guessed that. This one included great wheels of cheese, adding a savoury element to the usual cinnamon and ginger smells.

Back in the little town of Krems there were more shiny things as well as an appealing pedestrian street, onion-domed churches and a remarkable variety of dogs on leashes.

And then we left the others to continue their cruise towards Passau while we started our long journey home. Thanks though to an eminently efficient and practical public transport system, we were able to pop from the airport into the city again for a final dose of culture: the National Library, a high, dim hall lined with leather-bound books and displayed copies of illuminated manuscripts dating back to 1430. Beautiful, and astonishingly detailed work - though it should be noted that cats all over the internet isn’t a new phenomenon:

Finally, we went to the Albertina art gallery to look at the ornately-decorated staterooms and an impressive collection from Monet to Miro. It also includes the actual, original, 1502 The Hare, by Albrecht Durer, which was a personal excitement to see, despite discovering that the image was prostituted in the gift shop as fridge magnet, pen, wine-glass lampshade, pack of tissues… Best souvenir prize though has to go to the yellow diamond road sign novelties stating ‘No Kangaroos in Austria’ - apparently, so many American tourists arrive here asking where the roos are, that it’s become a thing. What a hoot.

Wieder in Wien

On my third visit to Vienna, I'm still surprised by how grand it is, how neat, and how compact - everything I wanted was just around the corner, or next door. It wasn't actually raining, either, which helped, though the cobbles were still wet. That meant that the guard of honour we came across for some Japanese dignitary made a somewhat creepily evocative sound as their boots slapped down in unison as they marched away. Much nicer was the clatter of hooves, from the carriage horses all over the place and also some of the Spanish Riding School horses being taken across the road to their stables.

I wasn't able to go to their morning training session but the next best thing was to do a stable tour. It started off in that magnificent arena where the wood shavings had been neatly raked and the roof was an architectural marvel of its time. We heard all about the horses and their riders before going over to the stable yard complete with barrows of hay, a Christmas tree and a very friendly cat, where a few of the horses were looking out at us. Inside, the loose boxes were all deep golden straw, iron bars and wooden partitions, with ornamental horses' heads on the wall and each horse labelled with its lineage and name. They're stallions, of course, but are called by their dam's name, which seems a bit emasculating. Their feed schedules were written up, too: I liked that their grain mix is called muesli.

We weren't allowed to take photos in there, or to touch the horses, sadly, but I did shoot this one sneakily from the hip, which is why it's crooked. The horses were surprisingly regular-looking, only just over 15 hands, very round, with drooping Hapsburg lower lips, and not all of them were grey (white). Which is not to say that they weren't also beautiful creatures. And then there was the obligatory visit to Cafe Hawelka, all dim and old and cosy.

The day also included a visit to the Jewish museum behind the stark memorial to the 65,000 Viennese Holocaust victims, a sobering counterbalance to the frivolity of the many Christmas markets scented with cinnamon and ginger, and sparklingly pretty.

We finished with a classical concert for us alone, in a beautiful private music salon with a high, ornately carved wooden ceiling and perfect acoustics. The small orchestra of ten made a glorious sound, and almost as enjoyable as the Strauss and Mozart pops was the evident pleasure of the musicians at being able to play in such a perfect place. It was a brilliant way to end the day.

High and low

Yes, yes, it's the essence of a First World Problem - but that doesn't change the fact that it's very hard to pack for a trip where the destinations are currently registering 30 degrees Celsius, and a scant 3. That's Dubai, and Budapest - Auckland, FYI, is right now a balmy 19 degrees, which feels just right, so that's no help. Really, as far as this sort of thing goes, the best time, packing-wise, to travel to the opposite hemisphere is either spring or autumn, when you're already wearing the clothes you want to take. (That's not allowing for that broad band around the middle of the planet, mind, where things just get silly.) Otherwise, you have to use imagination, which is not my forte.

So, tomorrow I'm heading for Dubai in the sybaritic luxury of Business class on Emirates' A380 (for free, which will maybe mitigate somewhat the pain of having recently had to PAY for flights with them to Turkey next year, an eye-watering sum that was undercut three days later by $600 on a special offer from Singapore Airlines. Still hurting). On my last couple of trips to the UAE I had to go on a desert safari which included dune-busting in a 4WD, the last time leaving all us passengers sick as dogs from all the lurching and cornering, and totally unable to enjoy our "Arab-style buffet feast" - which, as it turned out, was no tragedy. So I've got out of it this time round and instead have paid (sigh) to do something much pleasanter and more peaceful: a ride over the dunes on an Arab horse, and then a sunset trek on a camel which will last 45 minutes and be much more fun than the scant three minutes you get as part of Arabian Adventures' desert safari.

Then it's on to Budapest, which I visited a couple of years ago on an Insight coach tour - beautiful city, no penance to return there. This time though I will be leaving along the river, on Uniworld's River Beatrice which will be my home for four nights as I sample the first part of their Danube cruise. I'm so happy to be returning to river cruising - quite my favourite mode of travel - though it is going to be cruel, making me leave after Vienna when everyone else will be continuing on to Passau in Germany. So I shall just have to make the most of my lovely cabin, the friendly staff, the great food, and all that continuous, 360-degree scenery. And you know what's going to make it even better? Christmas markets! I can taste the Glühwein already...

Without a single mention of Julie Andrews. Oops!

Aww, so the last of the von Trapp children has died: Maria, aged 99. She looked like a real sweetie, and she certainly had an interesting life, starting in Austria and ending in Vermont. The movie that we all know so well (and which I remember people going to see literally scores of times when it was released in 1965 - how they would have rued spending all that money if they'd known about video recordings then!) was only loosely based on real life, but the basic facts seem true.

I was in Salzburg for Christmas once - happy to report that at our hotel, Christmas (Eve) dinner was Englisches Roastbeef and not the traditional carp we were fearing - and went on the obligatory Sound of Music coach tour, visiting various locations including the pretty church where Maria and the Captain were wed, and the rather grand manor used for the house the family lived in. Of course you can guess the soundtrack on the bus. It was all very clichéd but still enjoyable, and the scenery was just lovely, especially in the crisp cold of a sunny winter's day. Sometimes it's worth gritting your indie teeth and going along with convention when you're travelling: things are popular for a reason, after all. It's a lovely place to be at Christmas too, by the way - actually, Salzburg is lovely at any time, and not just for its musical connections (Disney balanced by Mozart).

At the other end of the real Maria's life is Vermont, another beautiful part of the world - and I speak with the authority of having spent one day surreptitiously driving around it while officially on a Massachusetts famil. Well, gorgeous as that state is, who could resist sneaking across the nearby boundary to see real covered bridges, white clapboard farmhouses surrounded by green hills and autumn-bright maple trees? And the chance to buy genuine maple syrup, too? The bit I saw was so pretty, I would love to have had a proper look around. Sigh...

What's wrong with this picture?

Shop-front in Vienna with a glaring mistake - you know what it is, of course. Did you also know that crocodiles (for that's what this is, alligators having much blunter noses) can bite through a cow's - or, indeed, person's - leg like butter, but are feeble weeds when it comes to opening their jaws, so a simple bit of tape around their mouths is enough to defuse them? This snippet could save your life - glad to be of service.

I know this because I've been to Australia so often, and spent lots of my time there in the Top End: Queensland, WA and the Territory, where crocs are a fact of life. I've been to Australia so many times, in fact, that when I did a displacement-activity count up sometime last year, I was pretty astonished to realise that I'd had 85 Oz stories published. I sent off a Hey! Guess what? email to the head of Tourism Australia here, followed quite quickly by another admitting that Actually, that would have been more impressive if I'd hung on a bit and waited for my century, eh. But then the week before Christmas came and with it the Could we have it yesterday? assignment writing for the AustraliaAmazing100 campaign, and that bumped my total up to way over 100.

So it was really sweet and pleasing to have a moment of glory at the Australia on a Plate event a week or so ago, when Jenny called me up front for some praise and thanks and to give me a beautiful bouquet which is still going strong. And really, it's all been such a pleasure. When I scored my first famil, to Tasmania, I was thrilled; and the second, to South Australia, was just as lovely; and then when the third trip was to Queensland, I thought, Oh, Australia again. But I'm so over that: every time I cross the Ditch, I know I'm going to have fun, see fabulous scenery, eat delicious food, spend time with interesting, enthusiastic people and find out extraordinary things. I'm happy to go to Australia any time I'm asked. Me and my roll of insulation tape.

Reconnecting

Goodness knows how far I've travelled in the last six and a half weeks, or for how many hours (or days). I could work it out, but my poor jet-lagged brain wilts at the very notion. Let's just leave it at 7 flights, 11 rail journeys, one week-long cruise plus four other boat trips, and lots of driving. Being driven, rather, in cars, coaches, a roller-coaster and one ambulance.

There's been history and architecture, art and war, old friends and some new ones, a wedding and a camel, innumerable churches and cathedrals plus one astonishing mosque, lots of good food and a surprising amount of beer (favourite: Berliner Weisse - must be rot, not grun). It's been interesting, sad, funny, emotional, heart-warming, boring, horrifying, painful and tiring. The weather was summer-hot and winter-cold, with rain and an icy Mistral. I hated myself for packing so badly and having to haul around such a stupidly heavy suitcase, and will NEVER do that again.

Right now I feel that I never actually want to leave home again. Mainly because I'm tired, and sore, and have so much writing to do from the trips I've done this year already - but also because though I've seen such wonderful sights, such beauty of so many different sorts, I went down to the beach today and realised yet again that where natural beauty is concerned, a 20-minute drive is all it takes for an eyeful (and heartful) of the best.

Ahhhh, pine!

The tree went up yesterday, possibly the latest ever in our personal history: delayed by the flit down south to walk the Hollyford. "It doesn't feel like Christmas," wailed the Baby when we got back, and then sat and Grinched while we decorated it, hanging up all the old friends that it's always a pleasure to unwrap from the tissue every year. The little red glass Austrian post-horn, the English red phone box, the heavy glass New York orb, the Australian kookaburra, the fat pig from Leavenworth, WA, the Mickey Mouse bell from Disneyland - all reminders of end-of-year trips, when everyone is building up to Christmas and wherever you go looks especially pretty.

I think it's a great time to travel, even if it means early winter in the northern hemisphere: no such thing as bad weather, remember, just the wrong clothes. There's a buzz in the air, the locals as pleased and eager as the tourists, a satisfying synchronicity that you don't get at non-festival times of the year; also, it's interesting to see, amongst so much that's the same, what is different about foreign Christmases. Like the candles lit on family graves in Salzburg, or the cute little huts set up along Nyhavn in Copenhagen where, had we been just a few days later, we could have bought mulled wine and cinnamon biscuits and lovely crafts and gifts. Or special (and especially fattening) flavoured coffees at Starbucks in Seattle, or the Rockefeller Centre ice rink in New York, or the sprigs of holly on the uniform overcoats worn by sweating cast members at Disneyland in sunny LA...

This year's new tree decoration is a Saint Nicholas from Copenhagen in fetching curly-toed boots, which makes a nice connection with the Arabian Nights slippers I saw in the souqs in Dubai, where I stopped off both going and returning from Denmark and where I would have found it rather harder, I'm guessing, to find much that was Christmassy at all.

Baubles

Though I can't help getting sucked in sometimes, I've never been one for buying souvenirs when I travel - not of the Greetings from Blackpool sort, anyway: that's just stuff, ie what we could all do with less of in our lives. But Christmas tree ornaments are quite another matter, especially as we seem to travel most frequently late in the year, when they're on display in the shops: it's lovely to choose something that's not just pretty but personally meaningful too. While all the usual Christmas Day dramas are played out beneath the tree (nit-picking refinements of Secret Santa rules, Jekyll/Hyde transformations from bright-eyed to glazed, gradual shifts of social power from one generation to the next), the decorations hang there, reminders of other places, other times.

The pretty pig above is from Kris Kringle, the Christmas shop in Leavenworth's Front Street, open every day but one in the year: two storeys of sparkle and glitter of every shape and type you could imagine, and staffed by relentlessly cheerful assistants who have a superhuman resistance to the year-round continuous musak of carols and bells. Tucked into Washington state's Cascade mountains, Leavenworth is a Bavarian town that's picturesque all year round - certainly in autumn, when we were there - but really comes into its own at Christmas when the lights shine brightly (but aren't allowed to twinkle) and the snow lies fluffy along the streets.

 

New York would be fabulous at Christmas too, with skating at the Rockefeller Centre, muffled-up carriage rides through Central Park, the lights on Fifth Avenue, snow maybe... I do love a cold Christmas, it's the best.

Probably not San Francisco, though, which I suspect would be chilly and damp and grey, and not that inspiring outside. Far better to look at this ornament and remember riding the cable car to Washington Square and Little Italy on a sunny October day, hanging on tight on the surprisingly steep ups and downs, catching glimpses of the harbour, the Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid.

Not all our ornaments are American: there's a red glass post-horn from Austria, a kookaburra bauble from Australia, a country mailbox from Canada and lots from England where this year there Bing Crosby was probably banned from the airwaves: with the entire country, including the airports, frozen solid and immobile, there can have been very few people genuinely delighted about their white Christmas.

Dah dah dah, dah dah dah-dah-dah-dah...

And it's been a beautiful, beautiful day: calm, cloudless, hot; excellent food, good company, successful presents; nothing worse on the news than a cardinal's broken leg, no advertisements on TV and no need to wish I had eaten or drunk less.

The only small black cloud has been the discovery that the boy next door was given an electric guitar for Christmas, so it was the opening bars of 'Smoke on the Water' over and over again even before breakfast. But let me not be glum on this lovely day: at least he won't be able to play it at the same time as his drums.

I've had Christmas in New Caledonia, where I sat on a beach and shared with fellow-student friends a deli-roast chicken with wine and a baguette; I've had one on a cattle station in South Australia where we dressed formally and then played parlour games; in Salzburg we ate Englischer Rostbif late on Christmas Eve after standing in the dark in a graveyard where people lit candles on the tombstones and a trumpet played 'Silent Night'; and I've had lots of Christmases in England, not one of them white, but all of them jolly because there was always a pub session before lunch.

The whole festival is without doubt made for cold weather, and is more special in England because it's undiluted by summer holidays; and this year in Herefordshire we would have got our white Christmas. But still, there's a lot to be said for being able to walk the dog after dinner through the Pony Club where the grass is full of clover, buttercups and vetch, down to the park where families are playing indulgent games of cricket with the small fry, through the playground where little girls are shrieking under the fountain, to the creek where Fudge can have a swim before panting back home to collapse in the shade.

Where I can listen again to dah dah dah, dah dah dah-dah-dah-dah...