BACK HOME AGAIN

It is good to be back. Great to be back. Great to be home. I have been everywhere in the past two weeks. Won’t bore you with the slide show.

But, as I said in my Sunday Herald Sun column… I was in Athens for the first time. Then Paris and London. Most of if research and interviews for a new book and some travel articles and Hungry Hinch restaurant reviews for my internet site.

Some writing was in idyllic circumstances. I found a white-washed heaven called Mykonos. The Greek Island. Had always thought that Australian seafood was the best in the world. Not any more. Greek seafood in places like Piraeus and Mykonos is the best.

Discovered a taste sensation called sea urchin. Growing up in New Zealand we called them “sea eggs” – those weird spiky things your Dad told you not step on. And we laughed at the Maoris who used to scavenge for them, And even eat them. Yuck. Boy was I wrong.

My most lasting impressions after a whirlwind trip with stops in Athens, Paris, London, Dubai and Singapore. Even Cyprus. Expensive. The Euro kills tourists.

To be corny: it IS so great to be home. I actually doubt I’ll travel again—except on business, except on book or film research-- for a long, long time. Trite as it may seem. The quality of our life. The quality of our food. And restaurants. And how comparatively cheap it is here. The Euro has added awesome costs in Europe. Last week there was a protest movement in Italy to “bring back the Lira”. I can understand it.

In Britain – as Tony Blair and French President Chirac snarl and insult each other and fight about the future of the whole EC – it seems to me the Poms were right in staying with the pound. But the pound is now a currency which cripples Australian tourists. We talk our dollar up in the US but in London the three-to-one ratio kills you. Try taking a cab from Heathrow to Kensington. It costs the Aussie equivalent of $130.

In many EC countries it seems they ignorantly embraced the Euro and dumped their own francs, and drachmas, and marks, etcetera for the new currency but didn’t adjust the prices to reality.

In Mykonos, Greece – in a pleasant upmarket, but not five-star, restaurant by the sea – from where they got the fish ordered -- it cost me $100 Australian for a fish that you would pay 25 bucks for here. And it wasn’t char-grilled enough as the menu promised.

Anyway. Two weeks out of the country. I’ve been catching up over the weekend. Douglas Wood was freed. Was it a ransom? Cleo has cancelled the Hinch centrefold. My manager didn’t want me to do it anyway. Neither did my girlfriend. John Anderson has quit. Should the new National Party leader be, automatically, the Deputy Prime Minister. I don’t think so.

Fill me in on your opinions over the past two weeks. The major issues. The only Aussie news I got on TV in Paris and London was that our invincible cricketers were beaten by everybody including Bangladesh. That takes away the threatening, unbeatable, invincible, Aussie psychological aura. Don’t it. Some English bowler took three for four? And Philippoussis got knocked out of Wimbledon. And Henman the Tinman too. What else is new?

Monday June 27 , 2005

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2005