Tom Womack

(this artıcle may have odd characters ın; I'm using a Turkısh keyboard whıch has dotless-I where I'd expect normal-I, and dotted ı where I'd expect tılde)

There ıs, pace aldabra, a day's entertaınment to be had ın Sofıa: the archaeologıcal museum ıs unexpectedly good (you would have thought the huge horde of golden Thracıan grave goods mıght have featured on the sıgnage, rather than beıng ın an anonymous room on the thırd floor next to the Exhıbıt of Thıngs That Don't Fıt Elsewhere In Thıs Musem), there are a couple of good churches, there's an art museum whıch suggests that Bulgarıan artısts of the fortıes tended to murky colours applıed wıth wıde brushwork. Sofia seems seedıer than the other cıtıes on thıs trıp; lots of casınos and adverts for 'gentlemens club'.

The traın to Istanbul ıs not great fun; the guards (bıglot Bulgarıan/Turkısh, neıther of whıch really helps) charge you ten euros for solo occupancy of a cabın even ıf they dıdn't have anyone else to put there, and you had to get out and queue at 3am for ten mınutes for a vısa and an hour more to get the vısa stamped. Sarkozy seems quıte popular and French presıdentıal terms are long, so I fear it'll be at least another fourteen years before the forces of Schengen overwhelm the Turkish border controls.

Maybe little sleep and no breakfast sets one up for beıng easily over-awed, but Istanbul ıs awesomely concentrated; the Blue Mosque and Hagıa Sophıa face one another over a medıum-sized garden, the Topkapi Palace behind on one side and what remains of Constantine's palace wıth ıts enormous mosaic floor behind on the other, Sultan Ahmed's tomb next to the Blue Mosque and Justinian's 40000-cubıc-metre water cıstern underneath. It beıng Ramadan, the north courtyard of the Blue Mosque ıs full of itinerant sellers of pious texts ın Turkish; I have not indulged.

More Byzantine churches, gold-tessera mosaics of the saints and an overpowering smell of incense from the burning scented oils. The Roman Forum (signposted, of course, as 'Roman Agora'), with well-preserved covered shopping mall. Following the traditional habits of Englishmen and climbing the steep street by the main walls to the Eptapyrgeon (seven towers, though I could only see a couple of them and you couldn't get inside) of the Byzantine walled bit right at the top; the Eastern Empire being no slouches at military matters, the view even from the bottom of the watch-towers was quite astounding.

The Archaeological Museum of Thessalonika, which had good artefacts (some really spectacular filigree-gold grave goods from about 300BC, high-class mosaic entranceways from upper-class Romano-Macedonian houses, a few glorious portrait busts) and really rather good expository text; it helped to have wandered around the city for a few days and figured out roughly where the sites were on the ground. Lots of models of what buildings would have looked like.

A cruise around the bay, wandering along the sea-front at sunset and encountering the old lady who feeds all the stray cats of this part of town, roast fish for supper and back to the hostel.

The train was three hours late; such things happen, and luckily the delay was in Serbia so the Macedonian border came at a civilised hour of the morning. The train trip through the two Macedonias was indeed impressive; I spent most of the daylight portion staring out of the window with the wind blowing in my hair, and ended up thoroughly covered in blown dust.

Hill after hill, some of them covered with low brush, some with bare charcoal branches and some of them looking like textbook examples of erosion. Little white churches at the tops of hills; vineyards; goats and donkeys on the farms. A large shiny-domed mosque standing defiantly just at the Fyromian border.

Thessaloniki lacks a proper hostel (there's a business plan for someone, though I suspect the property prices make it a difficult proposition), so I'm staying in a very central Real Hotel, costing for a night more than the place in Belgrade would have charged for a week, and took the opportunity for an unreasonably luxuriant bath. Have just booked in to a different hotel, via a lastminute.com-type service, at less than half the price for tomorrow and Monday; to walk into a hotel off the street and ask for a room clearly marks one as an irredeemable rube.

Then walking along the coast road, against an absurdly pretty sunset; the street is packed with trendy bars in which young Greeks are drinking cold frothy chocolate drinks and watching the world go by, so I joined them. And now to ask Google for a nice restaurant and go to it (Google was unhelpful, but wandering through the streets until you encounter the smell of souvlaki suffices).

I have forgotten the name of the person who tried and entirely failed to teach me classical Greek at age nine, but she will be dismayed to discover that I can't stop myself dotting my iotas, though maybe happy that I'm collecting vocabulary. Yes, no, please, thankyou, orange, peach, chocolate ... νε οχι παρακαλο εβχαριστο πορτοκαλα ποδακινο σοκολαδα.

It's grown on me, or perhaps it's just that you look at a city differently after thirteen hours of sleep in a bed on legs than after three in one on rails. I spent the afternoon wandering around the centre; the Parliament, three parks, several gold-mosaiced churches including the huge Sava Temple which is not yet finished, and is large enough that several JCBs are working on different bits of construction under the great dome, and the vigorously hagiographic Nikolai Tesla museum, with Real Demonstrations made mostly of brass and illuminated when active by foot-long lightning; also a walk across the two bridges and along the Danube-bank park at dusk.

Perhaps fittingly for Tesla, the Unique Fountain To A Design Of Tesla outside his museum doesn't in fact work; it's supposed to be a mighty symmetrical waterfall driven by an enormous impeller pump, but the water actually descends in a dozen singularly unexciting separate trickles. There's a lovely series of letters between Tesla and Tiffany's (as in breakfast) concerning the design of the fountain, in which Tesla's replies never bear any relation to Tiffany's requests but are much more of the form 'behold! I have another completely different design, which is twelve metres tall / can support a three-foot hollow aluminium sphere on a column of water / is lit by four colours of discharge lamp; see blueprints enclosed'; Tiffany's requests get testier, and the final letter says that the matter has been referred to Tesla's attorneys.

According to the museum Tesla invented alternating current, radio, X-rays and two kinds of death ray; I think the first of these is conventional belief and the second was confirmed by the US Supreme Court after an endless litigation. Brass models of the death rays are not on display.

On Tuesday I visited the Donauturm for a panorama of Vienna, took a tour of the UN building, visited the Stephansdom now that the Pope has left, wandered down one of the fancier shopping streets, found the strange (painted in pastel panels and held up with glazed columns in the shape of bannister-posts from stately home staircases) Hundertwasserhaus, wandered in the gardens of the Schonbrunn palace, and went to the zoo. Got thoroughly soaked twice, but Rohan trousers dry fast.

They do not have two pandas, they have three; but it takes a long time for the mother to lick the baby panda into shape, so mother and baby were not at home to visitors. They have a large glass-sided room full of ring-tailed lemurs: 50% kitten, 50% monkey, 75% tail and 103% cute.

I'm in Belgrade as I type; comfortable sleeper train, except that at 2:15am Hungarian customs come on board to check you out of Hungary, and at 3am their Serbian counterparts come on board to check you into Serbia. Also the train was roughly three hours late, but this meant it got in at a nice civilised 9:15 rather than a somewhat tiresome 6:30.

To the fortress, Carruthers!

I got to Vienna this morning; the Holy Father, Benedict XVI, had arrived in Austria the previous day, and was breaking the bread in the Stephansdom projected onto a giant screen outside watched by all the available faithful as I walked past.

Didn't in the end go to the London Aquarium on Saturday, but to the British museum; saw a wonderful piece at the end of the Coptic gallery, late-nineteenth-century Ethiopian depicting the defeat of the Italian army, with iconography such that the Ethiopians had both the Virgin Mary and the Maxim gun on their side.

I'm afraid I can't recommend the Orient Express; the train stopped at two-hour intervals from Strasbourg to Vienna and woke me up each time. The LGV Est manages to rise to the level of boredom of air travel; you sit in a comfy chair, and 3% of the output of one of France's larger nuclear power stations pushes you along through the darkening evening without your noticing, except that when you got in you were in Paris and when you get out two hours later you're in Alsace. The countryside from Paris to Vienna seems entirely to be farm-covered hills of various degrees of rollingness; half the time the train runs at the bottom of sidings and the rest of the time along the top of ridges through just enough trees to make photography irritating.

I've been attending the SHARCS2007 cryptography conference here, causing some slight surprise by being actually unaffiliated rather than by leaving my affiliation field blank to disguise my intentions. There are few blank affiliations, though one person who looked perfect to be cast as First Anarchist in an adaptation of 'The Man Who Was Thursday' had simply 'Government of Israel' and two or three, to whom I admit I did not attempt to make conversation, had 'Russian Security Service' and asked questions at one of the talks which made it clear that mathematics was not really their thing. I met up again with a lot of pleasant mathematicians from all over Europe, and I must admit I felt at home. I love the academic camaraderie of conferences, and a habit of casually reading papers means I can bluff my way pretty effectively in dinner- and coffee-table conversation; now, if only I could do the actual mathematics ...

Walked back from the conference meal along the banks of the Donaucanal, the buildings variously flood-lit. I'm not sure it's as nice as Berlin, but I could get to like Vienna.

There is in fact a good reason why travelling without a vehicle is called 'backpacking' rather than 'large unwieldy duffel-bagging'; Ben has lent me Dad's large green backpack.

The Sot-Weed Factor, surpassing dense as it is in verbosity, is also much heavier even than most books its size.

Waterloo Station is next to the Great London Aquarium, so, after having to get to London two hours early because the trains stop running at noon, I ought to be able to get in an hour and a half of fish before getting on the Eurostar.

Itinerary

Saturday 8/9	On the sleeper Strasbourg->Vienna
9/9, 10/9	Porzellaneum hostel, Vienna
11/9	On the sleeper Vienna->Belgrade
12/9, 13/9, 14/9	Star Hostel, Belgrade
15/9, 16/9	Nis Hostel, Nis
17/9, 18/9	Mostel Hostel, Sofia
19/9	On the sleeper Sofia->Istanbul
20/9, 21/9, 22/9	Istanbul Hostel, 35 Kutlu Gun Sokak, Sultanahmet, Byzantium
23/9	Easyjet flight 2384 arr Luton Airport 1500

Hostels appear to have Internet even in the smaller cities of Serbia, so I'll probably post more from the Balkans than I usually do from England.

Today I cycled to Peterborough.

The route is here; through the villages - there's at least one lovely thatched cottage in Rampton and Ramsey seemed smart - then out into the Fens where the roads suddenly become perfectly straight and run along the sides of perfectly straight drainage ditches. Not sure which drains they were, though the one in Ramsey Forty Foot is fairly obvious; I planned this route in my usual way by running through it a few times on Google Maps and writing down notes about which roads to turn onto, and Google Maps doesn't name the drains.

42 miles, which took between 10 and 3:15, but included a leisurely hour at the Dog in a Doublet at mile 35 eating a large steak; having nothing to do in Peterborough, I rushed the last seven miles to get to the station just in time for the 1518 back to Cambridge, so this was purely a cycle ride and not a visit to Peterborough in the slightest. Averaged ten miles an hour, which is good for me.

I'm pondering something in the Ipswich or Colchester direction for my next ride; those are sixty miles, but I think I could manage that. In theory Hills Road extends to Colchester, but I'm sure there's a more interesting route to be found than 47 miles straight down Hills Road. naath warns me that in Essex, as well as villages with names like Helions Bumpstead, there are hills.

Mining companies.

I thought I just about understood mining companies. You own some unprepossessing land in Australia, or Kazakhstan, or Chile, under which are rocks made of copper. You buy incredibly expensive machines for grinding the rocks to impalpable dust and getting the copper out. You sell the copper. You pay royalties to the government whose land you own, which they invest wisely in upgrading the railway from Alice Springs to Perth.

Machines wear out on a fairly well-understood schedule; copper is needed both in things that people want, like iPods, and things that people need, like washing-machine motors. In the long term there's the risk that you might find new copper mines more slowly than you use yours up, and there's the risk (faced by mercury miners) that demand might change in secular ways; on the other hand demand might change in other ways - ALCOA used to give away lumps of gallium in the hope that someone find a use for this critical component of microwave amplifiers for mobile phones. But if you're a big miner you might well have a copper mine, an iron mine, a mercury mine which you closed in 1995 and an oil well, and a small amount of funding to a bloke in a back room at CUED perfecting the electrolytic refinement of scandium; as copper gets replaced by plastic, so money that would have gone in your copper purse ends up in your oil wallet, and as people start wanting even lighter, fuel-efficienter aircraft made with aluminium-scandium alloys, so your bloke in the back room at CUED gets to buy a big house in Cherry Hinton.

Over the last few years the shares of the big miners have gone up significantly, with the usual justification being that China has lots of people, and lots of them will want houses, in which are copper pipes and copper wiring.

China still has lots of people; it is not clear that fewer of them want houses in the middle of August than wanted houses in the middle of July. So why have the big miners usually been the reddest and most plummetting shares on the LSE when the LSE goes all red and people start watching Liverpool Street for falling bankers?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2145060,00.html

'Goat keeper in New Zealand, who sleeps in the back of a car with his pet possum, turns out not to be missing peer Lord Lucan'