Bavaria

I know it´s only been three days, but I think I´m going to enjoy teaching here for a few months, despite having to get up at five in the morning. My students are middle and senior management at the giant brewery here, which has now been taken over by South African Breweries (Miller) and so is part of the world´s second largest beer producer. They are all really keen to learn because they know that good English could earn them business trips to almost anywhere in the world.

At the moment I´m only doing three-and-a-half hours a day, but that´s more than enough to cover all my expenses and save as much as I did in England on my journalist´s wage. It really is like the ´olden days´here. With a 20,000 peso note in your pocket (which by today´s exchange rate is four pounds and 79p) you can buy dinner, a packet of smokes, catch a taxi into town, have several beers and catch a taxi home. And you´ve still got enough money left for a swivelling luminous Virgin Mary.

Now I´m working a bit I´m getting to grips with the city´s public transport system, which is great, particularly as you can get from one side of the city to the other for about 25p. The main means of getting about are known as collectivos, which are minibuses of various sizes, ages and degrees of comfort which stop whenever they see somebody waving an umbrella. In contrast to Central America, these vehicles are actually designed for adults to sit in, rather than for eight-year-old 1950s American children. My favourite thing about these buses are the direction signs in the front windows, which despite looking hand-painted are incredibly consistent throughout Bogota. At first glance they look like some devilish alphanumeric bastard son of Soduku, but with patient observation an incredibly logical and thoroughly integrated transport system emerges from the jumble of words, letters and numbers. On top of the collectivo fleet is the city´s Transmillenio service, which was built for the year 2000 as some sort of overland underground, if that makes sense. You buy your 25p ticket and pass through barriers into covered platforms in the middle of the city´s wide avenues. Then, within minutes, an immaculate bendy bus appears alongside the glass walls and automatic doors open. I´m not sure if the drivers have some electronic help, but the platform doors are always perfectly lined up with the entrance to the bus. On top of these various buses are the yellow taxis, which magically appear within seconds of you deciding to catch one. Unlike most places outside london they have meters which the drivers never fiddle with. Unlike London they tick along in pence, not pounds.

All in all, getting around this city is a civilised and painless experience. Walking is alright too - barring a few mysterious holes the pavements are wide, clean, well maintained and with less litter and fewer dog turds than in Britain.

By the way, I´ve just been chatting to a middle-aged chap from Bristol who asked me where I was from. I told him the Vale of Evesham. "Ah, I know it," he said. "About 25 years ago I did a season of plum picking there. I worked with a load of Gypsies for these three old brothers . . . Martin, I think they were called."