The chickenpox European travels
London, Poland and Italy.
It all sounded like a great plan for me, Lindsey and Shari.
Things didn't work out exactly like we wanted, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless!
Considerations on intercontinental travels and problems
Writing a report of my travels and experiences for my friends is usually a matter of timing. You wait too much, and you get a very technical report with step-by-step information about what happened and what I did. You don't wait at all (maybe because you use your mobile phone / laptop to write notes) and what you get are long, long articles that probably can't describe the big picture.
I wrote this article just 7 days after I reviewed pictures and life went back to normal. So why waiting so long to publish? Well, life again got particularly busy what was a nice draft ready to get live shifted at the bottom of the pole of priorities. Football, fixing the house and Lindsey (not in this particular order) moved back up and everything else was less important. But by then the article looked simply too much of a day to day report and had little that I liked.
It went like this: first week: Olaf sick at work with chickenpox (varicella!), Lindsey and Shari taking a million of pictures and having fun in London. Weekend: Olaf can't fly to Poland, Lindsey and Shari go to Wimbledon. Second week: Shari can't fly to Italy (no English passport, no visa), Olaf and Lindsey spend a week in Canegrate doing very little and ending almost every evening at the Texas pub.
I know you want details.
It was definitely a different trip. First of all, for the first time since forever I was in London, on holiday, with someone. More than someone actually. Lindsey, my new wife, was with me, and so was Shari, Lindsey's friend that some of you may remember from the wedding (just check the pictures, they are all there).
The plan was nice and easy: fly to London, spend a week there, then fly out for the weekend in Poland, introduce Lindsey to my grandparents and Poland to the South Africans, then back to London, out to Italy to officially introduce my wife to the rest of my family and friends, then back to London and back to South Africa. You don't want to know the final price of all these tickets, but luckily we managed to found convenient prices by buying tickets directly on emirates (5400 rand - 360 pounds via Dubai) after getting crazy quotes from the greedy local travel agencies.
My personal goal was to move forward my work enough to be able to enjoy 10 days of holiday with Lindsey (and Shari), to buy cheap stuff in London (you can't beat Lillywhites for sport clothing and you won't find a better choice for electronic equipment than PC World) and to generally get back in touch with all those (never) forgotten friends that I haven't seen for so long. Oh, and visit Poland again for my yearly trip. And spend some time showing off the countries I lived and I came from.
All so nice, all so simple. Yes, the traveling hours accumulated would probably be called insane by other people
[a disaster happened and I lost most of the content here, and I don't have a backup. Maybe one day I will re-write the content of this page, but I doubt it. Anyway, I think that at the end of this page I was just saying how annoyed I was by getting the damn chickenpox after so many hours of flight, and probably how many passengers I infected without even knowing it..]
10 days in London
Sian, Lindsey's friend from her Fulham Primary School days (that ended in 2004, you may remember it ), collected us in a nice and warm evening of June. Breathing fresh air after so many hours of air conditioning was great, even if we were in an underground parking in Gatwick. I could smell London again.
Some of you asked me where I would have stayed in this trip, and some of you gently offering accommodation to me, my wife and her friend. Thanks to Anna though, still living in Monaco, on the Mediterranean Sea, I had free access to my old, historical flat, so used and abuse by those years of the Olafmeister & Robster, and friends. As I described it last year , Anna changed completely the place and even Lindsey was surprised to see a flat that used to be, well, boyish, in some sort of stylish bachelor pad.
After a quick pizza at the Pagliaccio we crashed ready to face the weekend, me and Lindsey in my old room, and Shari in Rob's old room (ok, I should start call all the room "Anna's").
The weekend was quite busy. We spent Saturday shopping, looking for all those things that we (I) needed and generally enjoying the city on the usual Piccadilly - Swiss Court (no more! They knocked it down) - Trafalgar Square- Big Ben - London Eye - Tate - Shakespeare's Globe and St Paul walk that I did so many times in the past with friends coming to visit me.
Back then it had sense: you see a lot in one go and then all you want to do is sit in a Pub with Meister and drink Guinness and no nothing else for the rest of the weekend (as planned).
On Sunday, it was time to visit that part of the Thomson's family still here: Pamela and Jonny, auntie and uncle to Lindsey. It was almost the end of a circle. When Lindsey was here the last time as tourist (April 2007) , we had our first (and only) engagement party at their house, in a beautiful spring day, since we got engaged only days earlier.
[again, I lost half of the content in this page due to a crash of the server. So, here I was just writing about how, after a nice weekend, I got sick and still I went to work for 5 days, before almost dying from the chickenpox. Lindsey and Shari, in the meanwhile, had a great week exploring the city. And we went to some open air theatre, you can check the pictures in the link below!]
Italy, home sweet bar
With Shari still stuck in London due to the lack of a travel visa, only Lindsey and I traveled to see my family.
The chicken pox infection was disappearing. Instead of holes with fluids I was crusting all over.
I didn't mind: I'd rather feel something tough and crusty with my fingers that those damn blisters.
My face was twice the size (ah, those glands), but at least no permanent scarring visible, only one crater by the hairline.
The torso was the worse, and still is, I can still some scars that apparently will disappear only in 2-3 months.
At least I didn't look like a leper anymore, and Easyjet didn't stop me at the boarding.
If the summer in London was cool and fresh, Italy was hot and sweaty. Olga, my little sister (well, turning 30 soon!) collected the Olgiati at the Malpensa airport and we were home in 20 minutes.
Bart, my giant hairy dog (shaved for the occasion) was there to greet me and Lindsey, and so was my dad. Olga turned her old room in a proper sleeping room, after years of adapting the room of her teenagers' years in something more mature. The final result was really good, and she gave the newlywed couple the big and comfy bed.
From my previous reports of every single time I came back home you can imagine the routine I forced Lindsey to adjust too: late wake ups in the morning, something to do in the afternoon while waiting for my friends to drive us to the Texas Town Pub.
Only now that someone is with me I realize how boring someone can see the routine. But while I was in London my goal when in Italy was to relax and not to anything new or too complicated.
Now that I have a wife who is not Italian, I may have found an excuse to start doing what I haven't done in a long time: explore the country. After all, isn't everyone agreeing that Italy is a beautiful place to visit?
The plan was to actually visit the lakes and travel by train to Monaco (in France) to see Anna, who was waiting for us. For some weird reasons she was in Paris losing a train to Milan and not getting home until it was too late for us to come. Next time Anna, don't worry.
So, stuck in Canegrate and with a Family Sunday coming quite soon, I took Lindsey on the Lago Maggiore .
I was born in the north, far away from the sea. We don't have crowded and overpriced beaches here, but we have nice lakes (overcrowded by Germans). The lake of Como , the Lake Maggiore, the lake of Garda . On a summer day, they are all beautiful. On a summer day.
[ok, last page with this note. As you already know, I lost most of the content. Lindsey and I enjoyed a nice day on the lake, even with a summer storm that left us wet for a while, and then a week in the company of my family, dog and friends. They took us to nice restaurants, but we always ended up in the Texas Town bar. We left after celebrating my sister's 30 birthday. It was a sad moment since I had to leave but nostalgia is part of my life!]
Posted by Olaf Olgiati the 28 July 2008
Some of you asked me where I would have stayed in this trip, and some of you gently offering accommodation to me, my wife and her friend. Thanks to Anna though, still living in Monaco, on the Mediterranean Sea, I had free access to my old, historical flat, so used and abuse by those years of the Olafmeister & Robster, and friends. As I described it last year , Anna changed completely the place and even Lindsey was surprised to see a flat that used to be, well, boyish, in some sort of stylish bachelor pad.
After a quick pizza at the Pagliaccio we crashed ready to face the weekend, me and Lindsey in my old room, and Shari in Rob's old room (ok, I should start call all the room "Anna's").
With Shari still stuck in London due to the lack of a travel visa, only Lindsey and I traveled to see my family.
Bart, my giant hairy dog (shaved for the occasion) was there to greet me and Lindsey, and so was my dad. Olga turned her old room in a proper sleeping room, after years of adapting the room of her teenagers' years in something more mature. The final result was really good, and she gave the newlywed couple the big and comfy bed. 
Only now that someone is with me I realize how boring someone can see the routine. But while I was in London my goal when in Italy was to relax and not to anything new or too complicated.