We were waiting, seated, ready to go, tray tables stowed and seat backs in the upright position on Air New Zealand flight NZ 8577 a Dehavilland Dash 8 Turbo Prop service from Tauranga to Wellington. Nothing happened. The door remained open, the flight attendant remained in place at the topContinue Reading
Jennifer Oriel, a recent contributor to the right wing think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs, provided an opinion piece to the Australian on 23 September 2015 which was breathtaking in its inaccuracy, curiously unabashed in its misrepresentation of recent history and laughingly inconsistent and self-defeating in is argument. Evenso,Continue Reading
Ulm 48°24′N 09°59′E 1 September 2015 Ulm loves its sparrows. The fascination with sparrows is linked to a legend that during the construction of the Ulm Minster, workers were trying to bring a particularly long log through one of the city gates, but it did not fit. When they wereContinue Reading
The ride from Paris to Mamers can be over in around two hours without much effort. It takes a lot more concentration to make it last three or four days. That is what we set out to do. Hiring a car in Chartres and driving via Brou, Illiers-Combray, Bonneval, NogentContinue Reading
It is easy for a trip to Paris to fall into a groove of the standard, admittedly spectacular, sites. This time we decided not to follow that path, but instead to explore some areas that we have overlooked in the past. This decision was made easier by the fact thatContinue Reading
A tour of the Mercedies Benz Museum and the Porsh Muzeum in the home of the motor indusdry – StuttgardtContinue Reading
I was impressed in Seattle when I discovered that the city was the home of Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon and Starbucks, but Stuttgart has a much more impressive record. Home of Porsche, Daimler and Benz, and Bosch, it claims to be the birth place of the international motor industry, and whileContinue Reading