Loved your Travel photos, you know you should really make an album in this site, www.trekinu.com .
like this presentation, http://www.trekinu.com/viewtrek.aspx?trkid=mquiko5rgn2bbjt
its free and you can share with us the places you traveled to on the map. takes 3-4 minutes... (this is NOT a site to replace useFilm, it's for sharing albums with music and send to friends and share here with your photos)
Well, Len, any telephone box *will* be vandalized in exactly the same way. They could replace the old res ones with new red ones too.
About the double-deckers, I heard that they were abandoned by the by in many cities. They were still there in London the last time I was there, some years ago, but some guys in the hotel told me that they were being replaced in other cities like for example Newcastle. So, great news to know that they are still there, even in lower numbers. Great news, really! :-)
Thanks for stopping by, Nick, and for the comprehensive comment. Like you, I regret the demise of the red telephone boxes - though they were being vandalised in many cities and towns and looked a real eyesore.
I may have been misleading in something I said - the old double-decker buses haven't actually been abandoned. There are still plenty around, some of them new ones, too. I think one of the aims of these new 'trams', though, was to try and reduce the numbers needed.
And thanks a lot for the help for my vocabulary. I was also rather disappointed when I heard that the double-decker was abandoned. That was (and still is) not a clever decision for me. They used much of the argumentation about a more "nowadays" technology, security, and also the high emissions of the old double-deckers, which was right and nice. But they could also put new technologies (engine, etc) in the old busses, and thus also keep one of the things that contributed so much to the typical picture in cities of the UK. It was something that made one immediately know the country. Same goes also for the red telephone cabines.
In general, I find that the very own character of any of the countries in Europe is something that one has to love and be glad about. It's exciting! It is exactly this multi-facetted whole which can only be the base upon which a union can be successful *and* good. Or what do I search for when I am in the UK? UK without the double-deckers (and of course also the wrong side to drive on the road ;-)) would be like a soup without salt. :-( Let's hope that this kind of mania for absolute unification will no more be taken for the union itself, which should be something else. Namely, just accepting that things go different in the UK, different in Germany, differnt in Spain, etc, etc. When I am in a party I don't want to meet the same person in many copies, ey? ;-) Would be like having one single style of phtography in this forum.
Hi, Nick - Thanks for the useful suggestions. Yes, we do call this a tram in England (though I'm of an age when I tend to think of trams as double-decker things, abandoned in the middle of the 20th Century in favour of the omnibus, only to be reborn in these continental-styled concertina-like vehicles in recent years.
Good details and sense for subtle deoth here, Len! The almost uniform coloring in grey tones enhanced the typical street and city atmosphere. There are some poixelation effects (jigsaw) like for example on the pole at the left, or also on the top of the tram, if you look exactly. (BTW, do we name that vehicle a tram, or what do you call that in the UK?)
A bit more of the top of the buildings could enhance this ine further, I think. But still keeping the tram (or whatever it is called). So, perhaps a wider angle?
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{K:127263} 8/7/2008