Veronika Wild

Not New Orleans, but sounds like it  It isn’t often that we have free entertainment in the street/ courtyard. Today it was the Hobart Jazz Club, playing up the hill at the Mayfair. Great fun – cheap wine, cheap food and good   company, all within walking - even crawling distance of home. Is that a bit of product placement I detect in the corner? Never mind they gave out prizes too, so I'll forgive them. Nothing like a couple of glasses of wine on a sunny afternoon to make one feel forgiving. The Jazz Executives belt out a tune This is the other group,   whose name I didn't catch. Excellent voice on the lead singer. At least two of the ladies from my dance class were there and when they played some of those Broadway numbers, we were up and dancing.  We had fun even though I have as yet, very little idea of the steps. Hey! They were playing our songs. Nor were we the only ones happily making fools of ourselves. This next picture isn't ...

One of several Motoring Themed Cafes in York I've maligned Perth and Western Australia a bit too. Tucked away between all those brash, nouveau riche brick piles, or away from those contiguous subdivisions, there are some nice places as well. Having been recently reunited with some of these photos, I'll just jot down a few things here. For some reason it's very hard to get cohesive tourist information in Perth and usually you have wander around and discover most of these things yourself. These inland towns which date from the 1830's all have a certain charm, especially for those who love old cars, motorbikes, aeroplanes or just a bit of nostalgia. York York, established in 1831 and which prides itself on being the oldest inland town, has both an aviation and a motoring history. York’s motoring identity grew from its perfect distance for early motorists leaving Perth, who wanted a scenic day‑trip that felt adventurous but achievable, and its handsome Victorian stree...

 He looks pretty harmless now, but like Chinggis Khan, Vlad the Impaler's savagery lingers on in the folk memory many centuries after his time I'm not exactly sure what possessed me to see Transylvania. Maybe it it was all those people, especially. in the U.S.A.  who asked, "Isn't that where Dracula came from?" when I said I was from Tasmania. It was  certainly a place shrouded in mystery and dark legends which no one could tell me much about. I knew I was entering a different world when the train took ten hours to reach it, even though it wasn't a lot further than the journeys I had taken to Vienna and Budapest and there was only one train a day, whereas to the other places there was one at least every hour. The first surprise when I arrived late at night in Sibiu,  was that the grapes had a perfume -  a deep rich velvety smell that filled the whole night air, like some exotic night blooming flower. I'll blame the Romans for that. After the original pop...