The next one...............Paris, 31 March 2009

Well no sooner than I have returned from Africa and I am on a plane again. - sometimes I wonder why I rent the flat at all!
Anyway, Austrian Airlines had the pleasure of my company on Sunday (FRA-VIE) and today I was back again for a trip (A320) to Paris. I have an all day meeting tomorrow at the Ecole Superiere des Mines ( Mining School) where I sit on a committee looking at the long term monitoring and management issues of the remediated French uranium mining sites.They mined uranium here in France for a long time after 1945 and they are certainly the largest uses of nuclear power in Europe ( well maybe Estonia is a bit bigger). Anyway they packed up some years ago and the site were all cleaned up. I am an "international expert" invited to sit on this large committee of stakeholders from the mining company, government agencies and community groups looking at the success of the operation and where to go from here.
the main plenary group meets every two months and I am an international observer on that committee ; there is a long term issues technical working group where I am a full member; but again they meet every two months or so and we cannot afford it so I will be here for 3-4 meetings only over a year..
Dinner at a local brasserie was OK with onion soup and an entrecote au poivre - with a red wine and calvados to finish.....................
Anyway the school is on the Boulevard St. Michel (memories of 1968) at the Place Luxembourg and my hotel is almost opposite in Rue Gay Lussac (A name for chemists).
Pictures will follow once I am back in Vienna.
I will have to consult with other bloggers as I am having problems with inserting pictures - and BLOGS need pictures as the words are sooooo boring on their own - well on this site.
anyway

Maputo Day 6 and 7

Well this is a post from Vienna on Sunday 29 March.

Now I am home I have taken time to add a few pictures to earlier posts and to say there been some comments posted which are now available to read.

So back to Maputo. The meeting finally wound up at about 1300 after some closing statements from the Permanent Secretary of the local Ministry of Mines and myself. A quick lunch out at the open air fast food court and then off to see some of the city on a tour.

This is the local shoe shine row,always busy. To the left is a mobile phone booth - the mobile phone has been connected to a regular hand set and you pay the man to use his phone.

This is the fast food court with the centre piece dolphin fountain. The big shopping centre is the place in the background.

This is the local beer to go with lunch!

I will post the tour separately

Maputo Day 5

This is a posting before work. Well life goes on here - sorry about the pictures but they will have to wait until I am back in Vienna as the link here is too slow to upload at the moment.
Work seems to be getting to a satisfactory end and we hope to finish about by 1300 today. The plan is then to try and see a bit of the town.
I am off to Algiers next apparently 25-27 April - the weekend working hours of an islamic nation mean another lost weekend.
We finally found the other sea food restaurant last night - good food but I was eating ostrich and not prawns for once. The walk back was a little nerve wracking as the taxis has all vanished until we were within 100m of the hotel...................
Also I plan to be in UK for Easter for a few days as I have to use up a few leave days very soon.
All being well we will depart for home at 1100 tomorrow but with about 6 hours lay over in JNB on the way before Frankfurt and scheduled arrival in Vienna by about 1100 Sunda morning.
Oh another admin detail. The time I have set for my blog is GMT/UTC/Zulu in the hope this will reduce confusion about when I am awake and working!

Maputo Day 4

Well the work continues but I have to say this is a very animated group and we are making good progress on the workplan for the 3 year project. The picture is one of our African colleagues giving his presentation abiout his home country.

Email contact has been spasmodic but I learned last night I shall be off to Algiers on 24-27 April. It seems that Algeria works muslim hours unlike Morocco and Tunisia.
Another good dinner last night at the same sea food place, although we did search for an alternative recommended by an Australian farmer/miner we have met here. Sadly his directions turned out to be too vague and Maputo is not a place to wander around in on foot after dark for too long away from any bright lights!

Maputo - Day 3

Well, there are a couple of things I forgot to mention about Maputo. The first is that, to my complete surprise, this country drives on the left! Another thing is that the seafood here was always very famous and last night the "experts" group went out to a restaurant for dinner and found avery reasonable place on the top of the large shopping centre just around the corner from our hotel. No lobsters last night but the chillie prawns and prawn curry were very good.

The pictutre is (l-r) my colleagues Shaun Guy Jean-Louis Petitclerc and Zwhang Jing and me sitting at dinner in the Big Blue seafood restaurant. This is in the shopping centre just around the corner from the hotel.


The Hotel Tivoli is (http://www.tivoli.odline.com/default.jsp?idVersao=2) 3 star place in an area about 10 minutes cab drive from the real centre of town. Basic but fine. Our meeting wit representatives from 14 African countries is being held here so we do not get out much. The view from my room is dominated by the old library as I said.
This place is being renovated by the look of the work going on.

The Offshore season begins

OK, the 2009 Wags offshore travel season has begun. Which is why I am sitting in Maputo, Mozambique just now having arrived from Vienna overnight via Frankfurt and Johannesburg. Fot those of an aviation bent it was an Airbus (AB) 320 of Austrian, a Boeing 747-400 from Frankfurt with Lufthansa and then an AB 319 from JNB with South African Airlines. As this was a real business trip it was all supposed to be Business Class but I was upgraded on the Lufthansa leg to sit in First Class - very nice and a decent bed almost as good as the QANTAS First Class.

The arrival at Maputo was pretty good but we had a few problems getting transport to the Hotel but here we are at the Hotel Tivoli. Not the greatest but adequate. The city is a mix and I think we are away from the centre but we have found a shopping mall nearby with a food court (open air) where 7 beers (4 people) cost only 8 euros. Dinner in the hotel was adequate but we are planning an assault on a sea food place once we find out where the good ones are. I have great memories of LM prawns from Laurenco Marques (now Maputo) during my work in neighbouring Swaziland in 1976.

This is not apparently a cheap place but we are looking forward to getting a little time to look around, perhaps on Friday after work. There were a number of slums on the way in from the airport but also some really nice old colonial portuguese villas in between the newer houses in the areas overlooking the sea.

On the drive in from the airport I only had my phone to use as a camera - those pictures only after I get back to Vienna as I do not have the right cable with me. I will use the other camera and post some local pictures tomorrow. The old National Library building across the street is a true colonial relic, a great building.

Oh - why am I here and what am I doing? This is a one week start up meeting for aregional project to assist countries in Africa who are getting into uranium mining to improve their regulatory systems and learn a bit about modern U mining safety and environmental management. The whole project will run for 3 years and this week is just to bring the various interested parties together and hammer out the final details of the work plan.

The Aussie invaders

One facet of life in the IAEA is a lot of professional mates drop by as they visit Vienna on business. Last weekend 7 March, two staff from the Office of the Supervising Scientist (OSS) dropped by on the last lap of a round the world (RTW) fact finding tour looking at various issues of best practice in uranium mining. Richard McAllister- who has been keeping a blog of their trip http://www.rtw18.blogspot.com/ - and Keith Tayler arrived from Brazil via Madrid on saturday evening. Once the lads were settled into the Hotel Pertschy we headed off to a wine bar for a beer or two. Ricardo is now Asistant Secretary OSS but was the previous incumbent of my old job, now called Director of Audit & Supervision - which is now Keith' s job.

After supper we all went our various ways and agreed to visit the Wachau (Danube Valley and Gorge) on Sunday.

Sunday dawned bright and dry so we set off in the car passing by the Risenrad on our way out of town, Vienna's giant ferris wheel. Once out of town we drove upstream to Krems where we left the motorway/autobahn and started up the road along the river. We stopped off at Durnstein to see the town and look up at the ruins of the castle where Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned on his way back from a crusade. As this is still winter season there were few shops or bars open; and while is was sunny it was not very warm in the cold wind that was blowing.



Richard and Keith at Durnstein in the sun, the smiles belie the temperature. The ruins of the castle are on the hilltop in the background.









Keith and Richard at the other end of the town with the Danube gorge in the background.

We headed up the river again but found that both ferries were closed down so we had to drive to Krems to get to a bridge to reach the other bank. Then another winter season problem when we found that the road up to Agstein Castle http://www.photoglobe.info/hl_austria_lower/austria_20040808_007.html

was closed for re-building . So that side trip went west too. Still we had a great lunch at the local gasthaus and then drove back to Vienna after a stop to to see Melk Monastery and the flood marks at the riverside pub.
Once back in Vienna the lads went shopping for souvenirs - the only shops open on a Sunday in Vienna. For dinner we naturally went to THE place - the Gulaschmuseum http://www.gulasch.at/.

After an excellent meal ( as always) we had a quick schnapps and then home.




Monday morning the lads visited IAEA for some meetings -
and a couple of photo opportunities before heading off home
to Darwin via London and Singapore.

Here they are standing in theIAEA Plaza - the flags all went back up the next day!





For me it was back to work and preparing for next weekeend's mission to Maputo in Mozambique.

Krakow Epilogue

Well it is another weekend and a chance to update the blog. I realised I have a few more images of Krakow to show and then I had a couple of visitors from Australia.

While on our way to the castle in Krakow we paused at this memorial to thos ewho were killed at Katyn during WW2. The cross sits in a small place at the foot of the castle walls.

The castle itself is pretty extensive and is a bit of an architectural mish-mash. At least five styles in the church alone in the background. As you can see the inner court yards had not been cleared of snow.





















On our way back from the castle we passed the "Krakow Eye". This a British registered, tethered, helium-filled balloon which was not operating sadly on the day we were there. The idea is to stand in the enclosed viewing gondola and the rise to get a bird's-eye view of the city. It stands on the river bank and the view over the city and castle should be great.
















For those who may be contemplating a visit to see Krakow this are the views of the guest flat, the double bed is in the foreground, the very smart bathroom is inside the cube at back left and the reading room is on top! The kitchen is really neat and the whole set up is superb.Very elegant guest accommodation.










And to show it really was cold the view from the balcony (big enough to sit out round a table) included these icicles.







This is just to prove that I was there - me and Iwona in the main square on Sunday afternoon. Ther is greta market inside the building at back right - mostly tourist stuff but some very nice handicrafts as
well.





And a final view of the old city - on the route from the flat to the station.

The first entry........................

Well, after starting off by saying there is no travel plan after a look at the wall chart in my office I can see trips to Mozambique, Algeria and France (2) and Kazakhstan on the work front this morning - all trips to be completed before June when there will be a trip to Australia. Later in the year we could have Namibia (again) and Liverpool and a bit more of Africa.

However, I did just have a great weekend in Krakow, Poland with my old school chum Chico (Vlademir Ceglowski) so perhaps I will begin the story there with few pictures of the beautiful (but cold and snowy) city in which Chico, and his friend Iwona, have a second home; well two actually as there are two apartments and guests get to stay in one super studio flat on the same floor as the main apartment.

The trip began after work on Friday 20th February when I caught the overnight sleeper train from Vienna WestBahnhof to Krakow. Nice single cabin on the Polish train; comfortable bed, wash basin, free souvenir towel and a breakfast pack comprising a bottle of orange juice, 2 bottles of water, a croissant filled with chocolate spread and a Mars bar! The train left on time at 2215 but was delayed for a couple of hours in the mountains of the Czech Republic so dawn came up to find me not in Krakow but looking out at a snowy Polish countryside.

My first view of Poland - in the snow!

So about 2 hours late the train reached Krakow at about 0830. Chic very kindly met me and we took a gentle stroll through the snowy streets and sunshine to the flat, about 15 minutes or so.

The flats are very modern and comfortable and the location is excellent. Inside the line of the old city walls and then only metres from the main square. The town is full of cafes and bars and restaurants so brunch was not a problem. There are also museums, theatres and interesting sites by the score, The flats are on the top floor with the green windows in the picture. The main square is at the far end of the street, not very far.

The main square, no snow in sight.

A stroll around the city cente was very interesting, not least because all the snow had been cleared and taken away so the square and environs were clean and dry- and no horse droppimgs from the carriages, unlike Vienna where that is a common hazard when walking in the main squares. The carriages are much the same as the viennese ones.

A carriage - just like Vienna

We wandered around to see one of the orginal university buildings, including a look inside at some of the equipment Copernicus developed . I had forgotten he was a man of Krakow as was Pope John Paul II.

The university courtyard and an instrument for sun movement plotting.

You can see a bit of snow around in the yard , and more on the main road where I snapped I and C walking!

The whole trip was great and we ate very well at modest prices, Good beer and wine and vodka. Definately a place I will visit again.
Thanks Iwona nd Chic and next time I'll make sure there are leaves on the trees!

Starter's Orders

After many, many years of travel for work and pleasure I am finally starting a BLOG. Of course, I have no immediate travel plan - but after 290 sectors flown since 2004 on 31 carriers in 28 aircraft types to carry out 50 IAEA missions in 28 countries I figure it is time to keep a diary.