AUSTRALIA'S GHAN TRAIN

                                     An Interesting Night

We took the Ghan train from Adelaide for a 970-mile overnight ride through the outback to Alice Springs. Waiting to board the train we watched all the windows being cleaned so we’d have nice clear views. Afghani camel trains, carrying supplies, made the long 970-mile trek between the two cities for many years, thus the name Ghan Train. A paved road did not exist until 1980.

We were delighted to learn that only one of us was booked into a double sleeper cabin. That meant that neither of us had to climb up into the top bunk and it gave us a lot more room. Our cabins were located just about midway from the bathrooms on either end of the train.

The train traveled over level ground in the center of the country. After the wheat fields of the Flinders Range, it was flat expanses of salt bush. Flat, flat, flat!

We bought a bottle of wine before boarding the train. Since we left Adelaide very late afternoon, we decided to open the wine before dinner. I have to tell you it was the first and last time I ever drank wine out of a Styrofoam cup---but it was all we had and the good Girl Scout in me said just make do!

Dinner on the train was good, and served in style.

     The evening on the train was a good time to learn a bit more about the land Down Under. We agreed Australia is a land of awesome natural wonders, vibrant contrasts, friendly people, sophisticated cities, exotic and unique wildlife and has a short but interesting history as a nation.

The county’s bush ballads and folk tales tell the story of the perseverance of farmhands, miners, and sheep shearers to build a nation in a challenging environment. It is the only nation in the world that covers an entire continent, and is the world’s sixth largest country in land area. It is the flattest, smallest and second driest continent (after Antarctica).

            Most of the train ride took place while we were sleeping, but I wager we missed little interesting scenery. Only an overnight bag was allowed on the train as all other luggage was put in a separate train car.

            We had breakfast on the train and arrived in Alice Springs 9:40 AM. Luggage was off loaded in a timely manner and we were actually at our motel at 10 AM.

            Alice Springs is small and the motel was exactly that, although clean and adequate. There was little choice in accommodations, but we knew we’d be back in wonderful small boutique hotels in a couple of days.

            The city was originally named Stuart after an explorer, but was renamed Alice Springs after Alice Todd, the wife of the telegraph station building project foreman. In 1939 the population was 700, today it is 26,000 give or take, and it is the center for Aboriginal artworks, and base camp for Outback travelers.

            Alice Springs started out as a cattle town, and as late as the 1970s the city still had a Wild West image. It now survives on the tourist trade. In the Northern Territory, twice the size of Texas, the 178,000 people are outnumbered by sheep and rivaled by kangaroos, dingoes and Afghan camels. There were at the time of my visit  1600 Americans living in Alice Springs, most involved in the NASA tracking station at Pine Gap.  Aborigines make up 20% of the city’s population.

TRIVIA

From Germany

Perfect climate and conditions abound along most of the Danube  for grape growing The area is hilly leading down to the river. It was strange to see vineyards planted in horizontal rows rather than vertical ones. It was explained that it makes picking the grapes easier for the girls and for the men to carry the full baskets of grapes to the trucks on the roads that lead through the vineyards. The vertical planting also provides for maximum sun to reach the all the leaves.

Eight ships constantly cruise the Rhine River to siphon off old oil to recycle and to keep the river clean.  What a good idea!

The Danube depends on rain fall and the river can be either too high or too low to transit. I have been grounded in each instance. There is not a thing you can do about it so go with the flow---no pun intended.

In Germany we were told that a single cross designates a church, but a cross with two crossbars designates a cathedral. Inside, the pulpit will be on the right if it is a church, on the left in a cathedral. Before people could read, monks had different floor tile designs so people would know where they were. Dom means dominate, to the highest power.

In Germany the expression tomcat means a hangover. The remedy is to eat salted fish followed by wine---so the fish can swim---From a docent with a very good sense of humor.   

Streets were crooked in medieval times because one can’t shoot around a corner. After the invention of the cannon, streets were straightened because fighting no longer took place in the streets.

Burg denotes a castle before the advent of artillery when the structure was primarily used as a fortification. Schloss refers to a castle after fortification when the structure was primarily a residence.

A good description of Rococo architecture is Baroque gone mad.

During the city walking tour of Regensburg I had kept an eye peeled for the Café Prinzess. Dating back to 1686, it is the oldest coffeehouse in Germany, and I wanted to stop there for at least a cold drink. It was a really hot day and after checking out the inside and upstairs of the café we elected to sit outside in the shade. We ordered iced coffee. Served with chocolate chip ice cream, it resembled a float rather than any iced coffee I’d ever had. It was different, but good and this ice creamaholic sure didn’t complain!

A few years later we stopped at an ice cream kiosk in Vienna one evening after dinner. I was trying to find out what the ice cream was with the tiny black flecks in it, but the language barrier was too much to cope with so thinking it was tiny bits of chocolate I bought it. A bit later the fellow behind us explained that it was opium ice cream—like from the poppies grown in Afghanistan. Then the light bulb went on in my head---I was eating poppy seed ice cream! I did get a lot of mileage out of the story though after  returning home.