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Home , 70000 Tons of Metal

The New European September 9-September 15, 2016 13

AGENDA

ADVENTURE

Plans to ban cars from the Rive Droite in Paris for a six-month trial move a step closer to becoming reality. HITCHHIKING THE The project, which would see the 3.3 kilometre stretch become totally car- free, is now supported by the police. The city’s council will now vote on the scheme later this month. The idea was launched by Mayor Anne Hidalgo in May last year. It follows a similar scheme, on the Left Bank, which was introduced by her predecessor Seven Seas Bertrand Delanoë. WITH VERONICA WYNNE-HUGHES Bora Bora

SPAIN The country’s first natural public swimming pool is expected to be CANARY BALEARIC completed later this month. The site, ISLANDS ISLANDS in the town of Dour, will not need BELIZE chlorine or large machinery to filter Rarotonga the water. Instead, water is natu- rally filtered by plants. Local school children are expected to use the FRENCH pool - which is not heated - later this GALAPAGOS POLYNESIA month. It will be open to the public next spring.

COOK ISLANDS

Fakara ve Papeete My round the world trip for ¤16 a month

Staff Reporter [email protected] Invited guests gather for the premiere of a divisive movie ‘Smolensk’ at the Opera House in Warsaw. The movie supports a For a native of a landlocked country, it is theory that the 2010 plane crash in perhaps not the most obvious of odysseys: that killed Poland’s President a quest to hitchhike across the world’s Lech Kaczynski and 95 others was an oceans, travelling in a succession of boats. assassination orchestrated by Russia. But after 27 months and 11 different craft, Photo: AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski Veronica Wynne-Hughes, from , has already reached halfway around the globe. In truth, while her mother is Hungarian, THE her father is English, so her seafaring spirit many perhaps be a reflection of her British heritage. At least 100,000 Groningen residents As a child, her family sailed extensively say their homes have been damaged around the Mediterranean, on a 36ft boat. by gas extraction, according to new In the winters, they would tour Europe by research. The study has been carried caravan. out by the University of Groningen, A peripatetic lifestyle saw her study the local authority and the public wherever the boat was moored for a few health department. The rate of gas months. After her parents’ divorce, she extraction in Groningen was cut back moved to Hungary with her mother. It was Veronica Wynne-Hughes has travelled halfway around the world – by hitching a ride on 11 at the start of this year after an in- there that, after studying at university in different sailing craft. Photo: Contributed crease in the frequency and magni- Liverpool and Budapest, she was working tude of earthquakes in the area over as a psychologist, when the desire to see the she gets more time to herself to explore the operation on her ankle. She is currently in the last decade. In the first six months world became too strong to resist. places she calls at. the Cook Islands, a particularly poignant of 2016 there were six quakes meas- “I was working happily, until the urge to Wynne-Hughes, who has been blogging stop for her. Her father, Barry Wynne, wrote uring 1.5 or more on the Richter scale, see the world hit me,” she said. “I knew I about her adventures in Hungarian and a book – often read to her as a bedtime story compared to 12 in the same period could sail and I knew I had virtually no English, set off from Malta in May 2014 and – called The Man Who Refused to Die, about the previous year. savings. So I put two and two together and has been travelling west ever since. seven pearl fishermen from the archipelago sought out a way of doing it: I would Her travels have been far from who went adrift in a 16ft open fishing boat hitchhike around the world on sailing uneventful. One boat started sinking, 90 which, after 2,000 nautical miles and 64 boats.” nautical miles out to sea, and was only days, ended up in the New Hebrides. Only In practice, this meant catching lifts on saved by the timely arrival of the Italian three survived. small, privately-owned boats. In exchange coastguard. Off the coast of , her From there, she is heading to Samoa, then Metal detectorists find an 82cm for food, a roof over her head and – boat had to alter course, to avoid the Fiji. Whether she continues all the way back Bronze Age sword which experts say crucially – transport, she helps to sail the attentions of pirates. In the Caribbean, she to Europe, though, remains to be seen. “I is still sharp. The 3,000-year-old item boats from port to port. At each destination, attended 70,000 Tons of Metal – a heavy don’t necessarily feel the need to come full was discovered by Ernst Christiansen if she wants to remain on the vessel, she metal festival held on board a ship. There circle,” she said. “My goal was just to see as and Lis Therkelsen, while they were will work on them, helping with various have also been technological breakdowns, a much of the planet as I could.” searching a field in western Zealand. tasks. fire on board, and heavy seas. The find was reported to the local The arrangement means she spends very In French Polynesia, she found herself I Follow her journey on hitchhikingthe7seas. museum which inspected the sword. little money – her record so far, 16 euros in a without a boat, so slept rough for a week com or on her Facebook page facebook. Experts say it dates from between month. until she secured her next vessel. She has com/hitchhikingthesevenseas 1100 and 900BC. Unlike paid crew – professionals are paid interrupted her travels just once, last to move boats around the world’s oceans – summer, to fly back to Hungary for an I Europe in Numbers: Hungary – page 37