Hans Cathcart’s Homepage

Sydney is a tourist trap, but in a really nice way.  Having spent a full week in Australia’s largest city I’m still unsure how to classify this town.  Sitting here at Pancakes on The Rocks I’m hopeful this place will live up to my expectations — I’m wishing for better than IHOP — surely that’s achievable.

There’s so much to do in this city, the people are really friendly, even the bums.  You get exactly what you’re promised here, but rarely surprisingly more.

Some exceptions: the backstage tour at the Opera House was great; and our tour guide Alannah, a former Qantas flight attendant, was sincerely interested in everyone having a great time.  The swing dancers at Swing Patrol, who I met on Friday and with whom I swung out to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy at the Sydney Festival, and who then invited me back to a rooftop office party, where my iPod jazz collection was exercised, were awesome and friendly.  And wrapping up the week with an excellent day trip into the Blue Mountains really made me like the Aussies.

Jen, our bus driver and tour guide, was super social and characteristically friendly.  The Oz Trails trip took us into the Blue Mountains, where we tool a ride on the the world’s steepest railway, visited a rain forest, saw fantastic scenery reminiscent of the Grand Canyon, and watched a family of Kangaroos hopping across a meadow.

Australia lived up to its expectations, unfortunately so did the foreign tourists, who tried scratching their names in the limestone cliffs, after being repeatedly told not to, and tried feeding the Kangaroos, after being asked not to.  People sometimes have no common sense or courtesy.

Graeme, my Kiwi-Aussie colleague, introduced me to Roo pie and was really fun to hang out with.  Clay, my flight instructor, helped me realize my dream of flying over Sydney and along the Australian coastline.  Pictures from the flight over Sydney on Facebook (log-in required).

So the final verdict, the pancakes were a little dry but good, the strawberries tasty and the bangers excellent.  The locals like using the term “no worries” which, come to think of it, is actually a perfect way to sum-up Sydney.

More than 25 years ago my father stood on this Opera stage.  The set I’m standing on is now for Tosca, a modernized design with 20th century props, but this room is the same — the famous Sydney Opera House.

Having parents who were both opera singers has always been a curiosity, a fun conversation on dates, and an aspect defining my life as slightly different.  The trade-off to moving around the world, switching schools, needing to make new friends and never quite knowing any place as home, is here on this stage.  It’s impossible to describe what it’s like to hear a dramatic tenor singing full volume on an opera stage, and doubly so what it’s like to have that man be your father.  And it isn’t about silly things like seeing your father die on stage, but rather the overwhelming voice.

Here in Sydney, home to the most beautiful and unique opera house, an architectural masterwork, one that was supposed to cost $6 million dollars and take 3 years to build, but instead took over 13 years and $103 million, my father sang as a guest tenor.

Halfway around the world I’ve traveled to see this, and to walk around the dressing rooms on the behind the scenes tour.  We visited what was recently Liza Minnelli’s dressing room and I played chopsticks on the Steinway that has been used by so many famous musicians — probably not to play chopsticks.  The dressing room has quite a view, out onto the Sydney harbour no less.  But all that pales in comparison with imagining my father dying on this stage.  ;-)  Doesn’t the hero always die in operas?

It’s hard to describe what this part of the world looks like from the air, but beautiful isolation would fit the bill.  Here at 36,000 feet I am comfortably typing away on my iPhone after having had breakfast courtesy China Air.  We’ve just crossed into the 2nd decade of the 21st century, a moment in my life I’ll have to reflect on in a later post, but I still find it fascinating to be flying in an American-built Boeing 747, owned by the Chinese communist government, over the former USSR.  Although I am traveling to Australia on my German passport, the American in me wonders what it was like for Gary Powers to be so high over this remarkable part of the world in his U-2 spy plane.

We’re two hours from Beijing now and the sun is finally shining on the snow-covered expanse of the Chinese mainland.  We’ve been flying along the trans-Siberian railway ever since we flew over Moscow, another city I would have loved to visit on this trip, and from up here it’s pretty clear how this place works, either you’re near the railroad or you’re a polar bear — I jest, but once we crossed the Ural mountain range into Asia, it was remarkable to still see signs of human life — apparently able to cling everywhere on this blue marble of ours.  This ‘fly-over country’ isn’t so different from the way parts of the US look in the winter, but just to the south of us are the Himalayas — oh why did we have to fly so far north.  No worries, surely I’ll get an opportunity to pilot an airplane around the peak of Everest one day.

In a few moments we’ll be touching down at Beijing’s new Olympics-inspired airport, unfortunately there’s cloud cover so I won’t get a chance to catch a glimpse of the Great Wall — that too will have to wait for another trip.  For now I’ll have to be content with the history-making nature of this brief stay.  Just yesterday my 98-year old grandfather told me that ever since my great-great-great-grandfather served as a German missionary in China, no one from my family has been in China since the 19th Century!  I’m not planning to preach to anyone, in case you’re wondering.  What incredible mountains so close to the city.

Looking down on the city now, I realize where I’ve seen this place before.  I designed this exact city-grid  in SimCity 2000 — everything is so symmetric and even the little cars move just like in the game.

Finally, on what seemed like the longest straight-in approach in history, with the Jumbo Jet’s slats deployed, must have been 15 minutes, flying at a mere 255 mph, is that normal?, we are sitting at the gate.  The air is oh so smoggy, giving the text on the catering van pulling up to my aircraft “Beijing Air Catering” an ironic - yet promising - meaning.

Here I am for four hours and then it’s off to Sydney!