Why the delays - and where are the pictures?

You might have wondered why there were no pictures, and why the updates were so sporadic. The truth is that internet access has its problems abroad:

New Zealand. Wow! Free use of the internet and not even hidden behind check-in. Upstairs there are some consoles (two out of three were working) but you can’t install any software or plug in cameras and the like. Which is pretty sensible.

Brisbane. If they had internet access I failed to find it. Mind you I was rather busy panicking over spoons..

Brunei. Beautiful transit lounge and a wee internet hub with about a dozen computers. Pay your money and sit at a computer and a clock tells you how long you’ve had. I didn’t try to plug anything in, but I did have to change some security settings in order to get access to the blog site. Most places won’t allow you to do that, so maybe I could plug things in too..

Dubai. No time to look, too amazed by the other things to look at!

Heathrow. Expensive and secure, no mucking about with their settings there! At £1 per 10 minutes it was looking a bit pricey, but the second pound gave me 10 minutes plus 10, and the next pound gave me 10 plus 10 plus 10, and the next gave me 40minutes! Did I read the instructions wrong or was it a glitch. I didn’t care, I was happy.

Romania. While my friend Jan insisted that Romania was still living in the Dark Ages I did manage to pretty quickly find an internet café near the main railway terminus in Bucharest. It was the only place I looked so I can’t say whether Jan was right about the rest of Romania, but I suspect not. Unfortunately for me the café was closed.

Hungary. This seemed a much more up-to-date country (all things being relative) and indeed my backpackers’ lodge did have a computer. They were pretty relaxed about the time I spent, having just a jam jar with a note on it asking for money to be popped in. They also allowed me to fiddle to my heart’s content. Unfortunately they had a 200MHz computer with Windows 98 first edition (circa 1990) which meant I couldn’t plug my camera or flash drive in to upload photos. I didn’t look for any other cafés and didn’t rip over any.

Slovakia. Kind of hard to judge really: I was on a train the whole time.

Czech Republic. Jan, whose place I was staying in, had access via a mobile phone which was unreliable at certain times. Being with Jan also meant my regime of writing up notes in the evening was somewhat curtailed as he showed me every single pub and beer in the country. Hence the gap in the blog. I’ll try to fill it.. we did use his laptop on the train though, picking up wireless signals for most of the two hours trip.

Germany. On a coach the whole time. Ah, not true, we did stop once. And the services did include internet access. But it was 3am and I had 5 minutes, so..

France. The lodge where I stayed had access, albeit horribly expensive. There were plenty of internet cafés around however the only one I tried did allow me to upload photos.. but my camera batteries failed at that point.

UK. Friends and family. Bags of access and ability to upload photos.. but they are friends and family and I haven’t seen them for a long, long time. Have a heart.

The moral is that when you go abroad you have varying degrees of internet access depending on where you are and who you are with. And the size of your hangover.