Colditz Caste

Sometimes when you are traveling you get to see something out of an aircraft window just for a moment that you didn't expect to see and would have liked to have seen more of. its not the best picture in the world but the large building in the centre of the picture is the infamous Colditz Castle used as a prisoner of war camp in world war two. I was on my way to Leipzig via Altenberg. Next time I have a spare day I will go and look at the museum they have there.

Ljubajana

I had been invited to make a presentation in ljubajana, the flight schedule gave me a few hours in the town. It is a typically Balkan town and is really nice in the summer.

One thing about "none western" towns is that normal people can still afford to live in the city centre. The photo above is taken from a bridge in the middle of town the flats are working class accommodation and you can see that the balconies are just an extension of the flat and people were sitting on the Balconies watching television. Prague and Budapest used to be the same but now they are much the same as every western European city with glass fronted office blocks and only the rich have flats in the middle

The river was cut into a deep narrow channel, this must make it susceptible to flooding when there is a bit of rain, that said the area round the river was full of pavement bars and restaurants and was beautiful.

There was a really helpfull 3D map of the town, I liked that !!

Perfect parking

I took this photo in a car park at work, by the time I had returned the Freelander had left without leaving a note. some passer by however had left details for the Mercedes owner.

Lost in Translation

I was sitting in the garden with a beer and some crisps trying to work out what the alternative to “real ingredients” is

LA from the ground Hollywood

All in all it was a really depressing city, I am glad I took the tour but I would hate to live there, there is apparently a fence round the Hollywood sign because people used to climb up the letters and commit suicide by jumping off.



some tours take you round all the stars houses, or you can buy the map and take your own tour, this was not for me.



the tour stopped at the Kodak theatre which hosts "the Oscars" every year.



The Foyer has every "best picture" winner on the walls as you walk in going back many years and with a number of great films.



they are confident of a long future in this location !!!



all the stars are outside, apparently its $20,000 to have a star, we were told some of the stars pay for themselves and the costs for the rest are picked up by the studios

LA from the ground Venice and Venice Beach

On this occasion I had allowed a day in Los Angeles for a possible meeting. In the end the meeting took place at the conference in San Diego so I had a spare day in LA. I took advantage of this to take a trip round the town.

The trip started in Venice, apparenelty some one liked the original one so much they decided to build a copy in LA.



The copy has a beach .... Venice Beach, which is now more famous that the suburb it took its name from.




Venice Beach was where Bay Watch was filmed and Arnold Schwarzenegger was discovered on Muscle beach which is itself part of Venice Beach.


Waiting for the next big wave......judging by how calm it was they may still be waiting

LA from the air

After two and a half tough days it was time to come home. There are no direct flights from San Diego to Europe so a stopover had to be taken somewhere. on this occasion it was LA. Flying over LA has a lot of parallels to flying over Cairo it is a huge metropolis

I had thought it was just a large drainage ditch but it turns out it is the Los Angeles River. Apparently it is dry for an average of 360 days a year. It seems appropriate that the river banks are entirely concrete

The parallels with Cairo disappeared as we flew over this freeway intersection