Essentials: Offbeat dinners in Adelaide and cider tastings in Tassie Chef Duncan Welgemoed will be presenting offbeat meals at Lola's Pergola during the Adelaide Festival. The Culture Smart Indonesia guidebook includes details on Bali's Nyepi celebrations. Tasmania's beautiful Huon Valley is home to the Apple Shed and Museum, which offers cider tastings. WITH the Adelaide Festival starting next month, a team of local chefs and winemakers has decided to get in on the act. Lola's Pergola is a concept developed by creative group The Local Motel, which includes designer James Brown and chef Duncan Welgemoed (Bistro Dom), pictured. There will be off-beat dinners by chefs from SA and interstate; a smokehouse and Hills hoist barbecue; winemaking; cocktails by Matthew Bax; international DJs. The Pergola will be on the banks of the Torrens for 10 nights from February 28. adelaidefestival.com.au JOHN LETHLEAN TRAVEL: THE Culture Smart series of pocket-sized guidebooks focuses on "attitudes, beliefs and behaviour" in myriad destinations. Published by Kuperard and distributed in Australia by Random House, the useful little books cover festivals, religious rites, etiquette and local family structures and customs. Nepal and Pakistan are in the mix of titles while the Indonesia guide includes details on Islamic festivals in Java and Hindu observances on the island of Bali such as Nyepi (pictured), the lunar New Year celebrations. $16.95; also available as e-books. randomhouse.com.au SUSAN KUROSAWA HEALTH: OLDER Australians have higher out-of-pocket healthcare expenses than younger people who are more able to afford it. A study by the Menzies Centre for Health Policy at the University of Sydney found older households, with one or more residents aged 65 and over, were paying a mean $3585 each year in out-of-pocket healthcare expenses. That amounts to 9.4 per cent of their total household expenditure, compared with 4.7 per cent for younger households for whom out-of-pocket healthcare expenses were estimated to be $3377. The biggest healthcare burden on younger households was private health premiums, and for older households it was vital prescription drugs, despite government subsidies. CIDER HOUSE: CIDER lovers now have even more reason to visit Tasmania's beautiful Huon Valley. Already home to many apple orchards and a growing number of cider producers, it's also where you'll find the newly restored and reopened Apple Shed and Museum, a showcase of local apple culture and regional foods, as well as being the cellar door for tastings and sales from Willie Smith's Organic Cider and Red Sails Cider, two of the island's leading makers. facebook.com/theappleshedtas; Open daily, 10am-6pm, 2064 Huon Highway, Grove. PAIN: GERMAN hospitals are known for a bit of a grin-and-bear-it attitude towards pain, culturally speaking. But things are starting to change. About 120 hospitals in the country now carry "pain-free" certifications - essentially a pledge to keep patients' pain at bearable levels. The shift to controlling pain is "quite new for people," says Nadja Nestler, a nurse and pain researcher from the northwestern city of Munster. "In Germany, it was normal for many, many years for people to never talk about their pain," she says. Many surgeons didn't see the point in taming pain they believed would subside within days. Some patients, especially older ones, often expected high levels of pain after surgery and didn't complain to doctors, whose authority they are loath to question. But there is a growing appreciation that poor pain control in the days following surgery can prolong hospital stays or cause acute pain to become chronic. German doctors also are responding to studies showing that small operations can generate intense pain. And hospitals are feeling pressure to compete for a younger crop of patients expecting better pain control. Unlike in the US, most German hospitals don't have to follow protocols for managing pain to receive accreditation. But the certification requires hospitals to set rules for assessing pain and to intervene to keep it low.