This is Blaine. This is me. And this is my dumpster. Fortunately for Blaine, he was in time to experience some of the Kiev “Love” as I call it (not the mail order type). Long queues for simple things, overcrowded buses, no hot water, no running water (on occassions) and general daftness. His slothful presence will be missed.
Firstly, I apologise for the uncharacteristic facebookesque portrait. In early September I accompanied two classes of grade eight students to Crimea and the Black Sea. Yes, the Black Sea is actually. And quite nice for swimming at this time of year. But one piece of advice; don’t go there for the beach, do I really need to explain what a soviet beach front looks like … ?
On the 22nd of August I turned thirty. Lauren and I celebrated the following day with a buffett breakfast at the new Hyatt in Kiev. Any words of wisdom at this early stage in life, you may ask? Find a great woman and don’t waste any time getting married to her; aside from that, the last 30 years are pleasant yet slightly surreal blur.
My last supper in Rome was a sad occassion. Italy was the penultimate stop on our trip and it would be a delicious yet meloncoly farewell. Spaghetti and clams tossed in olive oil and butter with garlic, chilli and garnished with chopped parsley. Sigh.
Every red-blooded male derives a certain amount of pleasure from devouring the flesh of a dead bovine; I am no exception. Florence has a big reputation for doing a great steak and I can vouch for that personally. Whilst training from Bologna to Florence we met a nice bloke, who makes a living selling antique watches, and he recommended us a good restaurant for steak. Unfortunately it was closed for August, like most of Italy, but the owner of a neighbouring cafe was able to direct us to the next best kept secret in well-trodden Florence.
Whilst dining at Ro’ Cocco’s in Bologna I took the liberty of creating my own pizza, in collaberation with the the helpful kitchen staff. This pizza is simply tomato puree, fresh porcini mushrooms, parma ham and mozzarella cooked, of course, in a wood fired pizza oven. After one bite I dubbed it Pizza San Paolo, because it’s so lush it’s worthy sainthood.
Emilia-Romagna has to be one of the prime destinations for lovers of fine cuisine. This region is home to such wonderfully aged delicacies as Parma-Ham, Parmigiano Reggiano and traditional balsamic vinegar. The thing that makes these products so special is that they are all aged to bring out amazing flavours and textures that one has to experience to believe. It’s just a question of time before I return.
Non-geeks stop reading NOW. It turns out that our hotel on the border of France and Switzerland is also next door to what is, arguably, the biggest, meanest, most expensive piece of scientific equipment on the planet: the CERN Large Hadron Collider. That big thing behind me is NOT the LHC, it’s just a sculpture, the real thing is burried 100m underground, runs underneath a number of towns and straddles both Switzerland and France and has a circumference of 26km. My main reason for visiting is really just symbolic, it’s also home to some of the most significant computing power on the planet and is a Mecca for an amazing thing, simply called The Grid.
We made for the mouth of the Loire river to begin our tour of the Loire Valley and discovered this amazing concrete structure from the second world war. Constructed by the German Navy, it served as a protective fortress for the construction and safe harbour of German U-Boats. The Allies tried to take this place out by aerial bombardment but only managed to erase the nearby town, one look at this concrete monster and you’ll see why; its roof is 8 metres thick! I recognised it immediately from playing Enemy Territory online 
As mentioned in a previous post, I have taken to retro-shaving and decided to make the arrangement more permanent with a visit to specialist supplier of such goodies in Berlin; The Different Scent. Their range of straight razors and safety razors, brushes, creams, soaps and other accessories was outstanding. Nicholas did a great job of helping me select the bits of kit that were right for me and now, for the first time in years, shaving is a pleasure.