Time machine

I can't think of two more contrasting capital cities than Seoul & Riga.

Seoul: teeming with 11 million people, high-tech everything (never seen so many big flat screens), city scraping the sky, airport 90 minutes from town, traffic jams.

Riga: just like you imagine Old Europe, story-book architecture, narrow cobble-stone streets, town squares, airport 10 minutes from town.

The last bit I appreciated particularly as it took 30 hours to get from Seoul airport to Riga airport - 4 flights. In a single day I touched Seoul, Hong Kong and Bangkok (6 hours stop at Bangkok with a good book) then overnight to Helsinki (thank God I slept, which is quite something given that Finnair seems to have the most uncomfortable economy class seating in the world) and then a one-hour hop to Riga. It was like being processed through a massive time tunnel of gates, walkways and flying birds to finally emerge at the other end in a different world. I've checked into the charming Hotel Riga, had a rehearsal and next comes soundcheck and gig. Bit steep that eh? Arrive in the morning after 30 hours travel and rehearsal, soundcheck and gig on same day! Brian Melvin is a hoot to play with and Toivo Unt is doing a sterling job. New news: the Festival we are playing in Saaremaa (Estonia) next week is also a classical festival run by one of Estonia's most distinguished cellists who has asked (via Toivo) that I play in a classical concert with him one of my compositions. So we will play my Ave Maria for cello and piano, except the concert is in a church with no piano so I will play my bit on the organ. Naturally I didn't bring the music not knowing this would come up but later tonight I will hack into my computer back in Australia with this special utility and cause it to fax the music to him. I still can't get over this technology.