Surly Vs The World

Getting up to date...

2011-02-02T14:18:00.000-08:00

It’s been a very eventful eight months since my last blog. What began as a summer in Berlin has turned into a much longer stay and during that time I have grown so unbelievably lazy when it comes to writing that I have surprised even myself. That has got to stop.

Summer in Berlin is brilliant. Tour guiding was amazing fun, always meeting new people and sharing my love of this fantastic city. My summer was filled with sun, fun and way too much booze. I also started playing Aussie Rules Footy for the Berlin Crocodiles, which has been a great way to keep fit and connect with some Aussies over here in Berlin. We unfortunately fell short of our goal to make the Grand Final but did manage to secure third.

In August was a trip to Ukraine and Poland with Dimma. That was pretty ridiculous. For some reason it seems that Dimma and I bring out the worst in each other. I was drunk or hungover the whole time, and he managed to fall asleep with tea Tree oil on his face on the first night of the trip, ruining his skin and then proceeded to complain about his facial herpes for the next two weeks. Despite that however the trip was eye opening and barrels of fun.

In late October I spent two weeks travelling through Egypt. Good thing I did it then, as there seems to be some major political unrest in the country now. Egypt is absolutely amazing, however Cairo is a complete toilet. I couldn’t get out of that city fast enough. Some highlights of that trip were Abu Simbel, floating down the Nile on a felucca for two days and climbing Mt Sinai. The last few days spent snorkeling in Dahab were also great fun, and I think one day I might go back there and get my divers licence.

The cold set into Berlin quite early this winter, and by early December there was already a foot of snow. I was delighted to see my first white Christmas, and even more excited to go out and kick a footy with the boys in the snow on Christmas day, which is something I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do in Australia. For new Years I went to Edinburgh for Hogmanay, their NYW celebrations and had a fantastic time with Mojo and fell in love with the city of Edinburgh. Seeing Biffy Clyro play in the gardens was a highlight, but the whole trip was brilliant.

Then January 2011 was back to more guiding in the snow, with a quick blast to the Czech mountains for some snowboarding. It was a great week on the snow, ruined somewhat by Sonja getting her arm broken on the morning of the first day. Obviously, her trip wasn’t a whole lot of fun, but I was glad that I had speakers in my helmet, and spent most of my days trying to get better at jumps, the halfpipe and swearing of rails permanently.

Australia Day 2011 is a complete blur. The drinking started in the early afternoon and extended until the early morning. I have vague recollections of behaving like a tool, saying things I shouldn’t, trying to hook up with girls that I shouldn’t and in general being a prototypical Australian douche. I guess if I’m going to do it any day, it might as well be Australia Day. At least I didn’t start any fights.

And that, pretty much brings us up to date. I am going to try to write more regularly and it will therefore not be a summary of the travels I have done over the last 8 months like this entry. Coming up this year I have trips to Austria and Cuba booked, the possibility of going through the Baltics and a strong chance of going through the Balkans with Dimma and Woo. All of which should create more than enough crazy shenanigans to make my following blog entries significantly better than this one.

Back in the land down under

2010-05-20T05:37:00.000-07:00

Twenty hours on a plane and I was back in Perth to the news that my 19 year old niece is 8 months pregnant. So, after I received that surprise, I made my way to the Como hotel where Alice and I had cooked up a little surprise of our own for Sara. As far as Sara knew she was just going out to dinner with all her friends for a casual chat on a Thursday night, possibly she was excited about my return in two days time, but not nearly as speechless as she was when I walked up behind her and proudly exclaimed “Did anyone order a jar of awesome?” In hindsight, my off the cuff decision of what to say when I walked in could have been less crap more rock, but jar of awesome it was…

Sara took a while to understand what was going on, and then all she could say was “Why are you here?” over and over again. It was great to see the whole gang again, and Sara’s reaction made all of Alice and my scheming well worthwhile.

Over the next two weeks in Perth I soaked up all that I remembered it to be. Sunny days, nice beaches, filled with my closest friends and utterly, utterly boring. I was lucky that my time there was so full of engagements with people, so I didn’t have too much time to wallow in the deafening banality that is Perth. With Ben and Ange’s wedding the first weekend, Trents bucks night the second weekend (at which, in a crowd of over twenty people, I was the only single guy. Oh how the times have changed.) The two weeks in Perth culminated with Trent and Tess’s fantastic wedding down south. All in all I really enjoyed my time in Perth, catching up with everyone was great, but as much as I knew it would happen, everyone has moved on with their lives, and I am no longer a part of it. Just as Perth is no longer a part of me.

After Perth it was the dreaded redeye flight to Melbourne before sleeping on a metal bench in the airport while I waited for Mick to pick me up and drive me back to Finley. Wow. Finley. Four days in Finley. That’s more time than I’ve spent in Finley in the last four years put together, and it felt like it too. It’s like a smaller, duller version of Perth but with a huge concentration of people whom I love. It was fantastic to see Cass and Azz and their children, who are all absolutely gorgeous. Although, just the sight of them as parents does make me feel exceptionally old. I used to say “You know you’re old when your ex-girlfriends are having kids”, well now I can say that I am old because my Nieces and Nephews have kids! Finley is definitely a place I look forward to visiting more regularly when I am back in Melbourne, but by the end of the four days, the pace of the town was beginning to do my head in. I think a weekend every month will be more than enough time there when I eventually move back to Melbourne.

Ah Melbourne. The greatest city in Australia and one of my top five favourite cities in the world. The city that all my others are measured by, as I have realized in my travels that if a city reminds me of Melbourne, there’s a good chance I’m going to love it. Again there was more catching up with people, both old friends from Perth who have seen the light and moved over, or friends I met travelling the world. I was lucky enough to spend lots of time with Nate and Sarah, and really remembered how much I missed those guys. There is definitely a part of me that will not be broken hearted if the travelling doesn’t continue forever and I moves back to Melbourne in the not too distant future. I got to see a few games of footy, including an absolute debacle of a game where Hawthorn got up over Richmond by 3 measly points, and also got to walk around the city where all the events of my book take place and took a lot of inspiration from the city. I look forward to ripping out some more chapters soon.

My flight out of Melbourne was a 24 hour nightmare via Abu Dhabi. It seemed like I was sat in the infant section as a different baby went off like an alarm every 15-20 minutes, but after that little taste of fatherhood hell I was happy to be in London and very happy to be childless. My time in London is a little bit of a waste of time, and in hindsight I should have gone direct to New York, but I was able to spend in London to relax and chillout before what I expect will be the tantalizing unstoppable madness of New York. Excuse me, I have a plane to catch.

The Long Road Home

2010-05-19T00:55:00.001-07:00

I left Berlin early on a Saturday morning and made my way to Munich, where Dimma and I were picked up by Kingy, the Driver who is doing the job I would have done at Alpen Rider this winter if I’d have done what I originally planned. Dimma and I were already drunk by the time Kingy got there and we proceeded to get more drunk as the trip went on. Upon arrival in Kirchberg we left our stuff in our room, went downstairs to the bar and continued on that same path. Drinking in the Alpen Rider bar is always a dangerous activity as Shevy (the man in charge) loves to dole out free shots of Jagermeister to everyone in the bar at regular intervals. By 10pm we were both trashed and decided to head into the bigger town of Kitzbuhel (about 6kms away) to go to the Londoner, the largest pub in the area. At the Londoner we continued to get more trashed and ended up back at the chalet at around 4am. We got up and snowboarded the next day, but this set the precedent for the whole trip, and an eight day bender was started.

The snow itself was pretty slushy for most of the week we were there, however the sixth day was epic, and definitely the best day of snowboarding I had ever had. The problems for the five days before this day varied from getting out on the snow early when it had just been groomed to find it icy and hard, or getting out on the snow late to find it slushy and full of moguls as it had been carved up for four hours before we got there. Also, a standard for the whole week was feeling like crap due to being hungover, sick and not having had enough sleep the night before.

On the fourth day, we could see that the snow was going to come in, as we were boarding in nearly a complete whiteout on the Kitzbuheler horn. We came back to our side of the mountain to make our way slowly home when Dimma realized that he had lost his pass and wouldn’t be able to use the lifts. I did one run by myself but with the zero visibility it was incredibly slow and not the most fun in the world.

That evening we had every intention of going to bed reasonably early to get out on the snow for some fresh powder, but like most nights we went out for a few beers, and Bo and Beth at the boomerang kept us plied with alcohol all night, leading to another night that ended around 3am and another morning where my desire for snowboarding was waging a war with my desire for sleep. Of course, with half a foot of fresh powder on the slopes, my desire for snow won out and after many insults to his manhood, Dimma got out of bed also. We went up to the horn again and found a run with an off piste drop off into a fairly unused red run on the back side of the horn, and we stuck with it pretty much all day. It was the first time I had boarded on powder since I’ve had the skills to do anything, and it was a totally amazing experience. It’s all just so much easier than scraping through the icy bumps, scared shitless that you might catch and edge and end up on your head. Through powder it’s easy and it doesn’t hurt if you do happen to stack it, and it’s just so silent as you carve through the white mist. The only thing I could hear over the whoosh of my board was my own joyous laughter.

At the end of the week in Kitzbuhel, we gone out every night on the turps, averaged about 4 hours slept a night, got up every day and boarded, progressed to both being comfortable on blacks and a bit of off piste stuff and were both incredibly sick. All in all, an absolutely sensational week.

After finally getting back to Dimmas flat in Clapham, we parked on the couch, watched movies, ate pizza and lamented our sore heads and swollen throats. The next day I had to make my way out Blackheath, to stay with Roz, a friend of Scottie’s who I had met while snowboarding in Meribel. I sent her an sms to make sure she’d be home at around 4pm when I was planning on coming over, and was horrified to find out that she had changed her mind and said that it was no longer convenient for me to stay there. Of course, I immediately started to complain about women and the fickle nature of their promises. I then sms’d Scottie to let him know, and then he also wondered what the hell was going on, as it had all been organized weeks in advance. After Scottie talked to Roz we were speaking on Facebook when he said that they didn’t know what I was talking about, and upon closer inspection of the Roz I had sent the message to, I realized that I had sent the message to a Roz I had hooked up with many months before while travelling and hadn’t really spoken to since. No wonder she didn’t think it would be convenient for me to stay there.

So, after moving my stuff over to Roz’s place in Blackheath I spent the next week in London catching up with people I had met travelling, including Ash and her friend for a game of bogan bingo in Clapham that ended with all of us being covered in texta thanks to a Bingo Blotter fight throughout the entire game. And a day out in London with Holly talking about all things musical and creative and how the lead singer of one of her many bands is not particularly talented, before heading into Camden to see Loud Howards awesome new lineup ruined by Dimma’s still wrecked throat, one week after our return from Austria.

My time in London was soon up though and the long flight home beckoned. I was excited to see everyone again and although the timing was pretty awful with the Guiding job back in Berlin, I had a sneaking suspicion that I might be ready to fall in love with Australia all over again.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

2010-03-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

In the last five weeks I have been an average tour guide, a good bartender, a lazy student, a tired and grumpy extra in a German Television commercial, an overly ambitious snowboarder, a limping cripple, a bad guy and finally someone who has no idea what to do. But we’ll run through it chronologically.

For the last weekend in February, Jax came to Berlin for a visit. I love having people visit me in Berlin because I really, really miss my friends and also because it allows me to show off the awesomeness that is Berlin, and hopefully feel better about my choice to stay in self imposed exile in this awesome city, but a long, long way from all my awesome friends.

Jax’s four day visit was loads of fun, however we did kinda wuss out on the really hard partying. I blame that on Jax and I both being over thirty, and also the fact that we walked about 12kms participating in both Taylormade and Alternative Berlin walking tours, seeing as much of the city as we could while she was here. One night we came home to drink before we went out and Jax fell asleep on the couch fully dressed, and even though she said she was just resting her eyes, she woke up the next morning in the same state.

After Jax left I went back to being slack at school, doing the bare minimum to not look like a tool in my class, yet still mostly speaking English outside school, and hence not retaining anything from class. I missed a day at school on the Wednesday after Jax left to be an extra on a TV commercial for Alice (Alice is a company, not a person). Paula’s friend Julie works for the production company that was doing the commercial and hence we got asked if we wanted to be in the ad. It was a long and boring day, but I did walk out with 90euro in cash at the end of it.

That Friday night, Paula and I went to see La Roux at the Astra. It was a great (if not a little short) show. We than came home, where I fell asleep for a bit before having to wake up at 2:30am to pack and then leave for the airport to catch my flight to Geneva. When I arrived in Geneva I had a 4 hour wait before Scott and the rest of the group arrived and we could catch our transfer to Meribel. After waiting in the wrong terminal for four hours, I had to run with my suitcase and backpack to the other terminal to catch the transfer and meet the others before the bus left.

The week in Meribel was fantastic. Scott and I were of a fairly similar skill level so we weren’t forever waiting for each other. The rest of the group that was there were all fun and a good laugh out on the town or back in the chalet. After smacking my head 3 times in the first 2 days I bought a helmet and then proceeded to not smack my head again until the last run of the last day when I was wiped out by a skier about 100m from the end of the piste. This was three hours after I had ruined my knee attempting jumps with Scott and epically failing each time. So, when the 15 hour journey back to Berlin began the next morning, I felt like a broken shell of a man, and slept most of the bus ride back to Geneva. Geneva airport on a Saturday morning was awful, so was the six hours waiting in Liverpool airport for my flight to Berlin, but all in all it was okay until I got home and smelled the foul stench of week old garbage, dirty pots and dishes and a freezer with fish in it that had stopped working.

So after dealing with that smelly debacle I got my stuff together and ended my relationship with Paula. It was, unfortunately done over the phone, but there were reasons for that, and reasons that I felt definitely benefited her, more than me. That was probably the least fun I’ve had while in Berlin so I put that behind me and moved into my mate Goncalo’s house for the week before I go snowboarding in Austria with Dimma.

I am planning on moving to London after coming back from Australia, with the logic being that I will be around friends and be able to speak the language, hence get a decent job and earn some decent money with which to do a bit of travel. Even though it’s more expensive to live in London, I figure the extra money I will undoubtedly be earning with a full time job will more than make up for the extra expense of rent.

And now we come to today. Today I had an interview for a tour guide position. The job I always wanted to have whilst in Berlin. And they loved me. I have got the job if I want it. This is after I’d given up and on Berlin and decided to move to London. It’s also after I decided to flag London off and travel around Eastern Europe in June. It’s like Berlin waited until I had completely given up on her and then unleashed an absolutely gorgeous cloud free day, and the job I’ve always wanted, to go with the madness that will be the upcoming Berlin summer full of sun, light and craziness.

Berlin. I love you. I hate you. You bitch.

Treading Water

2010-02-11T14:58:00.000-08:00

It’s now six weeks on in 2010 and the question may be; what is happening in my life in Berlin?

Not much.

I came to Berlin with a list of things that I needed to accomplish for my life here to be a success; Write book, learn language, run marathon, get job and so forth and so on. So far, there aren’t any failures, but there aren’t any successes either.

I am thirteen thousand words into the book. Not breathtaking progress, but progress all the same.
I am in doing a German class. Three hours per day. Monday to Friday. I think I’m getting better, but when even my German girlfriend pretty much refuses to speak German to me because it annoys her, it’s hard to get a valid picture of where I’m at.
The Berlin Marathon is not till late September, so that one is not going to be completed or failed for a while. But I am training. I even joined a gym when it became impossible to train on the icy footpaths. As always though, most of my training could be described as sporadic at best as 20 minutes 4 days a week on the elliptical trainer is hardly going to prepare me for a marathon.
I still have the job at the Irish pub and have actually grown to quite like it. I know what I’m doing, I get along with the people and I get paid in cash at the end of every shift. Unfortunately I’m only getting 1 shift per week and that is not going to cut it with two snowboarding trips coming up and flights from Australia and a return to Canada to pay for.

But I don’t want this to become a sook page, so in other news…

Berlin is still absolutely gorgeous. For a city that is considered by European standard to be more “efficient” than “Beautiful”, it’s doing alright in my book. The days of snow, while cold, are gorgeous and I don’t think I will ever get sick of walking around with my iPod as my only company, just soaking up the images of the streets.
Berlinale (the Berlin International Film Festival) is on at the moment, so there is quite a bit of excitement, but this makes it very difficult to get tickets, however I am hoping to catch some of the Australian films on the bill for a little taste of home.
It’s two weeks before Jax comes over for a weekend visit. I think I have the most fun here when I have people to take out and show the city to. I’ve seen it and Paula doesn’t care, but when we have a visitor, the tour guide comes out in me and I get to show off what I love about this place.
A week after Jax goes and I’m off to France for a snowboarding trip. I’m really looking forward to it, especially considering for most of the summer I assumed I would be snowboarding every day over the winter. It hasn’t quite turned out that way, but I’ll at least get to see if I’ve kept any of skills I found in Japan.

And with that, I’m off. I’ve got homework to do before my class tomorrow. Man, I haven’t had to do homework for eight years…. What a spin out.

Bis Bald (See you soon)

A Whole New Year

2010-01-14T03:03:00.000-08:00

Much to my relief things have improved markedly since my vent on my last post. There’s been visits by friends, we have got internet in the flat and I have started German classes, all of which have gone a long way to make me happier about my current situation here in Berlin. Of course, some problems still linger, such as the simple fact that I hate my job and am glad when I don’t get shifts, yet if that is the case, as it has been lately, I am burning through Australian Dollars like Deutschmarks in the 1920’s.

Just before New Years, Kate and Erin arrived in Berlin with some friends. It was great to see them again and go out for a few drinks in the city I love. While we did not have a white Christmas here, Berlin has been covered in a white blanket since about the 27th of December. There is something romantic about snow on a city and even through it’s very cold and messy, I still love the aesthetics of it.
New Years Eve was spent with a few of Paula’s friends at home, before going out the Potsdamer Platz to see the fireworks and then out to a club called “Ritter Butzke”. All of it was pretty awesome, the club especially was one of the coolest venues I have ever been to. I woke up with the expected headache and soon realized that I must’ve fallen on my ass quite severely as I could hardly walk. Paula later told me that I had fallen several times, and she had photos of the event. Nice

After having a few days to recover from New Years, Dima and Scottie arrived in Berlin after travelling through the Czech Rebublic and Poland. It was great to see Dima again as we always have plenty to talk about, even if it is only giving each other shit. I have really missed hanging out with guys and the time with Dima and Scottie was as much fun as I’ve had here. I took them on a tour of the historical sights of Berlin, along with telling them an abridged version of how it all went down. Even though that four hour walking tour is probably the coldest I have been in my life, it was still a great day, and reinforced my belief that I want to be a tour guide.

Dima and Scottie left, and I have now started German classes. They are every day from 2-5pm and while I definitely feel as stupid as I ever have, it’s nice to be learning something again. The class is full of Artists, everyone you’d expect to find in a Centrelink queue if I was with the same people in Australia. Painters, Dancers, Actors, Musicians, a Social Anthropologist and me, the Writer. Although I still haven’t made a great deal of headway in this regard. It’s coming up to 2 months and I have written a shade over two thousand words. I had originally planned to write at least 1000 words per day, not per month. Some planning has been done and major decisions regarding plot development have been made and then changed. I have two months before I go snowboarding and put another giant dent in my saving reserves, so I had better have written something worthwhile by then.

Berlin – Boxing Day

2009-12-29T06:57:00.000-08:00

I was hoping for a White Christmas while here in Berlin, but the weather decided to be a little premature. It snowed for a solid four days between the 18th and 22nd of December, but by Christmas morning there was none left. Nothing but damp, cold, grey streets to greet me as I awoke on Christmas morning, and the sense that I was on the opposite side of the planet to where I should be.

For Christmas Eve and Christmas night, Paula cooked up a storm, and for someone who had always told me she cant cook, she was spectacular. I got to feel the old Christmas feeling I know so well by eating myself senseless, resulting in a near inability to move for the hours following the feast. But unlike Christmas’s of the past, there was no basketball out the back with my nephews and brothers to wear off the over indulgence, and there was no knowledge that the next day would be spent dancing in a field in 40’C weather with my best friends to work off the excess calories.

Waking up on the morning of Boxing Day to a message from Sara that she was currently dancing to Stanton Warriors and missing me was pretty much my most difficult point here in Berlin. I am finding it increasingly difficult to give myself reasons why I should be here. I don’t want to be a quitter. I don’t want to be one of those people that moves to a place and doesn’t give it a chance, but every day here in Berlin I am starting to feel like I should be somewhere else.

Boxing Day itself was actually a pretty great day here in Berlin. Paula and I woke up at the relatively early time of 1pm and were out of the house by 2pm. The day was cold, but sunny with a sharp wind in the air as we made our way along the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall. It runs along Muhlenstrasse in Friedrichshain, and is called the East Side Gallery as it has been used as an artist space for countless murals by different artists painting about Germany, Peace, Freedon and the fall of the wall. It was great to see, as I’d been meaning to go there since we drove past it on the Busabout bus while leaving Berlin for Dresden nearly six months ago.

After the East Side Gallery we went into Postdamer Platz and had some Gluwein (hot Wine) at a Christmas market there before heading over to the Sony Centre to see Avatar in 3D. That was pretty awesome, and a really fun adventure, although I feel that we will never again see greatness the likes of T2 or Aliens from Cameron again. After walking out of the cinema, we went up a snow slope constructed in the middle of Potsdamer Platz and slid down on tyre tubes. It was ace fun and its always great to do something that I just could never have done in Australia.

That night we went out to the Berghain and Panorama Bar, which are two massive clubs, one on top of the other in an enormous old electrical building. The Berghain level was closed so we hung out in the Panorama bar dancing, talking and watching more than a few displays of public grossness before heading home at around 7am. Unfortunately it seems to be standard practice for me and Paula to have an argument on the way home whenever we go out on the town, which is pretty much always my fault and stems from the fact that I am feeling unfulfilled and unhappy in Berlin due to my own laziness and pick stupid little things and turn them into fights.

I know that I am a little depressed, and I knew that I would miss my friends and family, so don’t expect me on a plane home anytime soon. So much of how I feel at the moment is my own fault. I have done very little writing for the book, which was my main reason for isolating myself away from my UK friends aswell as my Australian ones. This isolation without reward is making me consistently angry with myself and making other problems seem larger that they would otherwise be. I kinda have a job in and Irish Pub. I don’t like it, and I don’t even know if I’m going to get another shift. I know that every time I have ever started a job I hate it until I feel comfortable and I know what I’m doing, and I’m sure that this is the issue here, but knowing that I could be in Perth or Melbourne earning five times as much in a job I dislike an equal amount makes it hard to keep a smile on while pouring endless pints of Guinness.

But more than anything, it’s the winter. I didn’t expect it to hit me the way it has. It’s not the cold. It’s not the rain. Its certainly not the snow. It’s the fact that of all the things in Australia I love to most it was the barbeques at Como, the trips to the beach with Trent, the blasts on Mundaring Weir road with Billy and Nate, the golf days and the pub lunches. It seems like all that is lost. And I constantly wonder why I am choosing to exile myself and miss out on all that. I know why I chose to do it. So I could write. But if I’m not going to write, maybe I should just accept that I am not going to be a writer and go home and suck it up.

I am sure that when the European Summer rolls around, things will change. There is ten times more stuff to do here in Summer, and I cant say that I haven’t enjoyed the differences in the Winter festive period. I started learning German in 2 weeks and I’m hoping that a little bit more knowledge of the language will help me feel less alone. There are reasons to stay. More reasons to stay than there are reasons to leave. I have not given up yet. I still think I can write this novel. I still think I can get a job I will enjoy. I want to be here for the summer. I just needed to vent.

Berl-In the Raw

2009-11-29T08:11:00.001-08:00

Nearly two weeks into my life in Berlin and most of my time has been filled with moving, unpacking, going to IKEA and Bauhaus (the German Bunnings) and putting stuff together in the house or bolting it to the walls. Hence Paula decided that is might be a nice change to just take it easy one evening and go to a “Therme”. It’s like a health spa, where you pay to get in but can then use any of the spas, saunas and pools in the complex on top of the building in central Berlin. It wasn’t too far away from Paula’s work so she had done all the research and wanted to go. I was happy to come along as I could do with a spa and felt like swimming a few laps.
It was cheaper after 8pm, so we waited til then, paid our 14euro to get in and got changed in our separate change rooms and I then walked up to meet Paula in the main pool area. I noticed straight away that this is not a pool for swimming laps, as it was more in a Roman bath kind of style, but it still looked very cool with the heated pool extending under the glass wall to the area on the rooftop outside. I waited by the pool, wearing my boardshorts and holding my small towel.
While waiting for Paula, I saw a couple of dudes walk up to the water, remove their towels, revealing them to be completely naked, and then get into the water. I figured, no problems. I’m in Europe. I’m used to seeing people naked and if that’s how they want to swim, then good on them. I then saw Paula and walked up to meet her. I walked into the shower area and saw that she was going topless. Again, no big deal. It was then that I was hit with the news. This Therme, unlike the ones Paula is used to in Hamburg, is Nude Only. I was gonna have to get my junk out.
I’m more than happy to walk around at home in the nude, even if the windows are all open and people can easily see in. I’ve also regularly got nude in public when drunk, but this was going to be the first time I’d done it stone cold sober. I stood there in the shower area with Paula and had a brief conniption regarding having to drop trou and get the boys out for all to see. After deciding that there really wasn’t a decision to be made and that it shouldn’t be a big deal, I removed my swimmers while Paula took off her bikini bottoms and we briskly walked to the nearest pool and got in.
I sat there for a while, feeling very self conscious and reminding Paula that not only was I brought up in Australia, where unlike Germany, public nakedness while sober is not commonplace, but I was also brought up Mormon, where any nakedness in front of anyone except your Wife would be frowned upon. It was all very foreign to me, but all that kept running through my head was “Welcome to Germany”.
It made matters slightly worse that I had brought such a small towel which wouldn’t wrap around my waist, so while others walked between pools and saunas they would be covered in either a large towel or a dressing gown, I was using my gym towel which did not quite make it around my waist, so I would be showing at least my ass or a leg to the world while walking about. I also didn’t have any sort of footwear, so was slumming around in bare feet while everyone else had slippers. I couldn’t have looked any more out of place if I tried.
But, after a while it all just becomes the norm and I started to enjoy the experience and the novelty of it all. I swam outside, under the full moon completely nude in a heated pool on a rooftop in the middle of Berlin. I had a shower in full view of the surrounding apartments, and I ran, nude from the steam room, to the cold pool, and then to the hot pool. All lots of fun and before long I didn’t give the fact that my penis was out in the wind a second though.
Paula and I had been into plenty of saunas over the night but she wanted to go into one that had the scented water put on the steamer. This one would be over 90’C and full of people, as most of the punters would have a similar idea to hers. I obliged, now fully enjoying the fact that nobody cares and nobody pays attention to anyone else. We sat in the 4mx4m sauna, in definitely the hottest climate I had ever endured with twenty other naked people and all that kept running though my mind was the song from “Flight of the Conchords” – Too many dicks on the dance floor.
After getting out of that sauna after 6 minutes of feeling like my skin and eyeballs were about to spontaneously combust, I jumped in the cold pool for a bit and actually started to feel light headed. I don’t think my heart took too kindly to all these massive changes in temperature. By the time it got to 11pm we were ready to end our nude adventure as we headed for the showers and made our way to our separate change rooms.
Upon leaving the Therme we made our way back to Neukolln and went out looking for food. As we got back there well after midnight the only things that were open were the late night kiosks, and it was out front of one of these kiosks that the night had its appropriately weird finale. Paula had just opened to door to the kiosk and I was standing on the pavement in front of it, when a dude riding along the pavement on his bike must’ve grabbed far too much front brake and sent himself sailing over the handlebars, not 4m away from where I was standing. There was nothing in front of him, and nothing to avoid, so I have no idea why he applied the brakes at all. He got up and swore at himself and said he was okay when I asked him how he was. I assume he was drunk but we’ll never know. I then bought myself some bread and went home and made myself some pasta.
Welcome to Berlin.

Berlin – Moving Time

2009-11-29T08:08:00.000-08:00

After fighting through larger than normal trains on the London tube system due to a few line closures, I finally made my way to Heathrow and settled in for another long wait, as once again, my flight had been delayed. Once we got up in the air it was a very quick and painless flight, especially as I had the whole row to myself because the plane was only about forty percent full.

Upon landing at Berlin Tegel, I waited for my luggage to come out of the carousel and could see Paula waiting on the other side of the glass. It was great to see her again, and I must admit I was relieved to see her, as I would’ve had nowhere to stay and no idea of where to go if she hadn’t been there. I was excited about my new start here in Berlin, but still knew that there would be many challenges, both in my relationship with Paula, and my relationship with the city of Berlin.

The next two days were made up mostly of just spending time with Paula, sleeping, packing and checking out the new apartment. By Neukolln standards, it is pretty sweet. It is not falling apart, nor is it in urgent need of renovation, but the hall floorboards are a different colour to the rest and all the lights come out of the wall rather than the ceiling, so it has plenty of its own ‘character’. Neukolln as an area is nicknamed “Little Istanbul” due to the fact that the population is predominantly Turkish. It is however an area with many students and expats due to the cheapness of the rent and close proximity to the awesome areas of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain.

Monday morning we were out of the house by 7:30am to get a van in order to drive to Hamburg and pick up all of Paula’s stuff from storage. Unfortunately the place where Paula had booked the van would only accept drivers with EU licenses, and hence would not let me take a van. We then had to search around for someone who would let me drive it and hence wasted two hours with that. By the time we got the van, picked up the washing machine, and dropped everything off at the new place, including getting that heavy-as-fuck washing machine up the stairs it was nearly two and the drive to Hamburg was at least three hours.

As it turned out, we would not be making the storage facility by closing time, hence we would have to stay with Paula’s Mum in Hamburg overnight. We spent the early evening getting Paula’s wardrobe, and some other stuff from the basement of the Irish pub she used to work at, and then went to her Dads storage locker too get more stuff before driving around for an hour near her Mum’s place looking for a parking spot. As it turns out, Paula is not a very good navigator, and has a fuse that is probably even shorter than mine, so we spent most of the night arguing about directions and yelling at each other before getting over it when we finally found where we were going. We finally got into her mums at 10pm after parking a suburb away and catching the train back. We had a little to eat, and then went to sleep as we had another stupidly early morning ahead of us.

Getting up at 7pm we had to rush to get the train, then jump in the car and hope that we could get to Paula’s storage facility without getting too lost. By some small miracle we got there without a problem, and then saw the sheer amount of crap Paula had put into storage and realized that she, like me, is a self-denying packrat. After playing Tetris with everything in the van for an hour and a bit, we finally got everything in and were ready to make our way back to Berlin. We unfortunately lost ourselves a bit on the autobahn network coming out of Hamburg and cost ourselves another hour and many more arguments. We eventually made it back to Berlin and the apartment at 3pm, and spent the next hour and a half moving stuff in. Paula went van to foyer and I went up the three flights of stairs, giving my legs a workout the likes of which they haven’t seen in five months. We then had to take the van back, which ended up being directly through the center of town and in the middle of peak hour, which wasn’t terribly fun.

Paula then had to go directly to work and I came back to the apartment to try to organize some things like the kitchen and the bed. I also saw blatant theft when I went to the supermarket as a dude walked into the store in front of me, then grabbed a crate of drinks and then walked straight back out the exit as I walked in. I walked around my new home neigbourhood for a while and thought of the many challenges that lie ahead for me. I have many things planned for my time in Berlin. I have a book to write; a language to learn; a marathon to train for and then run; and a job to get. Anything less than accomplishing all these things will be viewed as a complete failure on my part. I’d better get cracking.

Liverpool and Wigan – Surprisingly awesome.

2009-11-15T03:36:00.000-08:00

I arrived in Wigan and was immediately impressed with the size of it. I assumed it would be some tiny little village, but found that it was a proper little city. The bars and clubs in the city centre were mostly in the old English style and as I made my way along the road to my hotel, I saw that it would not be a bad place to go out, as the town seemed to have plenty to do.

By the time I got to my hotel I was happy to be able to sit down for a bit and chill out. I tried to call my cousins on the number Mum had given me, but unfortunately it didn’t work. Therefore I spent the next few hours on family history websites trying to get an address for where my Dad grew up. I did manage to find my Grandma’s extract from the 1901 census, but unfortunately this did not have an address, so I accepted that I would probably not find the house on this visit, and went off to explore the town instead.

The next morning I got on a train to Liverpool and although I was eagerly awaiting the trip to Anfield on Monday night, I can’t say I was terribly excited about going to Liverpool, due to the towns reputation of being ugly and unsafe. When I got there it was bigger and prettier than I had imagined. Certainly much prettier that Manchester and seemed to have a lot more history to it also. I walked around the city centre for a while as I waited for Richard to come and pick me up from the train station.

When Richard arrived he took me on a quick tour of the town, showing me the restored port area and shopping precincts before we drove out to Anfield to have a look at the stadium (and Goodison Park). We did the stadium tour and went inside the ground where I was able to sit in the Kop and hear storied about the ground and the clubs history. After leaving the ground we went through the Museum and saw more about the clubs 117 year history.
That evening we went out for a few beers and a meal at a pub near Richard’s house and watched Chelsea beat Manchester United. I would’ve preferred a nil all draw, but it is always nice seeing Man U lose. We then went out into the city to meet Jack and Nick at some University party thing called ‘Carnage’ that Nick was involved in due to him being a student at Liverpool University. Jack and Nick are two of the three guys met for about 30 minutes outside the five story nightclub in Prague on my first crazy night there. So while it was a bit weird to see them again, they are good lads and we had a top time. The night definitely lived up to its name as I got belted and apparently disappeared for over an hour before Richard managed to find me and get me home. The next morning I woke up feeling perfectly fine, but then went back to be and woke up a few hours later with the worst hangover of my life. I guess that means I was still drunk when I woke up the first time.

I finally dragged myself out of the house around noon and made my way into the city. I walked all around the city and made my way down to the port where I just sat in the sunshine for a bit and enjoyed the lovely view across the Mersey river. Down the river I could see a thick fog rolling in like a giant white wall, and within half an hour the entire city was engulfed in the whiteness and about 10’ colder. It still wasn’t raining though, and was really beautiful as I walked back to the train station through the gardens and museum district.

It was a Monday night game and Anfield with Liverpool desperately needing a win as they lined up against the lowly Birmingham, who they had not defeated in the last 5 years. We got the first goal but then a lack of defensive pressure let Birmingham go into half time 2-1 up. It was an absolutely freezing night, but the last halve was doing its best to keep us warm. Liverpool attacked mercilessly and every time the ball go close to the goal line we would all stand up in anticipation, with all that standing and sitting keeping me quite warm. Midway through the half Liverpool got a dubious penalty and Gerrard slotted it, however we were unable to get another goal and found ourselves coming away with only a draw. Oh well, there’s always next year.

The next morning I said farewell to Richard and caught the train back to London. I will definitely miss Liverpool, its culture and beauty was not what I expected and I will definitely go back some day, and possibly even live there. After all, I’ve got to see a Liverpool victory…

Oxford & Manchester

2009-11-07T06:38:00.000-08:00

The trip out to Manchester actually began with a short stopover in Oxford to see the town and catch up with two girls I met in Prague who study there. Jess and Chenting are in their first year at Oxford University and while Chenting lives in the Gay college, Waldham, Jess lives in the toffee nose college, Christ Church, and because of this took us around her college showing me lots of stuff including the great hall, which they eat their meals in. More importantly, however, it is where Harry, Ron and Hermione eat their meals in all of the Harry Potter movies. It was a pretty cool hall, but in all honesty the main reason I went there is because I know so many Harry Potter nuts who haven’t been there, that it makes me laugh to go there and tell them about it.

After spending a few hours with Chenting and Jess, I had a quick look around Oxford on my own, finding a store called “extreme” which sold snowboarding and surf gear. But had an electric chair to get up four steps at the front door. I must say, I’m glad that those that are unable to walk up four steps are being looked after in their surf and snowboard needs.

And with that bombshell, it was time to jump back on the train and head up to Manchester.

Manchester is a great place to be, it seems. The vibe is pretty active due to it being such a student town, and also there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of tourists there. This is probably due to the fact that there is not one thing I saw in my three days in Manchester that I considered was worth taking a photo of. It’s just a town like any other. But, what it does have going for it is a great nightlife and incredibly cheap drinks. Font bar has cocktails for 2 pounds. All night. Brilliant. And even at the Mint lounge, which was a club we went to, the drinks didn’t go over 3 pounds. I could like this city, but my liver wouldn’t.

London Days and Nights

2009-11-05T02:38:00.000-08:00

Friday came around and finally it was time to get out and do a bit. Luckily Kate had organized a night out with Erin and a few of their friends. I met Kate at Bethnal Green and we then went out for lunch in Shoreditch at the Spittalfields market. We walked back to Bethnal Green vshe had via Brick lane and some other well known spots along the way. Before too long it was time to start drinking, so we started on the wines and talked as we waited for some of Kate’s friends to arrive.

Ilsa rocked up first, she’s a stunner from Latvia, but strangely speaks with what is nearly an Australian accent, due to the amount of time she spent with Aussies while learning English. She’s apparently always had a thing for Aussie guys, but has recently turned to the darkside, getting herself a Kiwi boyfriend. Ilsa had recently got a little bit sick and then found that chowing down on Aspirin made her feel better, unfortunately she had forgotten that she is allergic too Aspirin and had since got a very sore and swollen tongue which she needed to apply Bonjella too every few minutes. She was never originally planning on coming out with us, but being as she had already been drinking all day, it didn’t take many more to convince her to come out with us.

Shortly after that Erin, and then David rocked up and the evening got rolling. We had ourselves in stitches most of the evening due to the fact that Ilsa would say “this song changed my life” to nearly every song that came on the stereo. And we would all laugh hysterically until we cried, then Erin would have to go re-apply her eye makeup. Then she came to me ask what it looked like, and I replied, “It looks fantastic Erin, just don’t look in any mirrors tonight”.

We made our way out to ‘cargo’, which was a cool club that was playing shithouse music, so we made our way somewhere else. I have no idea what it was called, and the music wasn’t a whole lot better, but it was free entry and we had a good time until we all rolled out of there at about 2am. We then walked to brick lane for a Bagel, before jumping on the bus and heading home.

The next morning Kate, Erin and I walked to an amazing food market. It was one little street with heaps of stalls, most of which being food. I got a fantastic meat pie, a muffin and a slice of brownie. I could’ve got a lot more if I was taking it home, rather than eating it that day. We then all made our way back to Kate’s place and watched “Drag me to Hell” in honour of it being Halloween. After the movie I made my way back to Jax and Belle’s, and was greeted by all the people on their way out to Halloween parties. Hannibal, bloodied Nurses, Vampire rock stars and Cutesy little witches were all there to greet me as I boarded my train.

Sunday morning was an early start as Belle, Jax, Belle’s student, Andreas and myself all jumped in a hire car and drove out to Stonehenge. It was absolutely atrocious weather until Jax asked Belle to wish for good weather when we were about 30 minutes away from Stonehenge. To my surprise it had totally fined up by the time we got to the ancient monolithic structure, and it remained fine for the rest of the day.
After taking some hilarious jumping photos in front of Stonehenge, we made our way to Glastonbury for lunch. It’s a very cute little town, although the lunch was a little overpriced for the quality. It’s still a little weird to be eating a meal in a building that was built two hundred years before the Europeans settled Australia however.

We left Glastonbury and I decided to let Belle drive, being as she hadn’t driven in 18 months and she does break the stereotype of how an Asian female drives. She started fairly promptly with a stall, but got the hang of it again before too long, and just as the sun was going down we arrived in Bath. It is a beautiful little town, and I do wish we got there in the daylight and got a bit more time to look around.

The next day I made myself angry by going to the Tate Modern and looking at all the modern art. Some modern art is great, but unfortunately most of it just makes me furious that such an unartistic pile of shit is being hung in a gallery next to Andy Warhol and others who are actually artists. The final straw was when there was a mirror. Nothing special about it. Just a mirror. With a little white card next to it sprouting some wank about it turning the art around and making the viewer part of the art. No. I’m sorry. No matter what crap you put on the little card, you have hung a mirror in an art gallery. You, good sir, are a wanker. That is all.
Tuesday was a particularly cruisy day where I did very little, but did hear from Paula that she had been accepted for a property in Neukoln. This means I have a place to live in Berlin, and along with that I’ve been getting some interest from a few of the jobs I’d been applying for so I’m starting to feel much happier about the upcoming move, even though I still know that it’s crazy. Now, at least, I feel like it’s good crazy.

London Week One

2009-10-30T05:17:00.000-07:00

I wasted the first 3 days of being back in London by being very unwell, however by Sunday night the triple Devils of Belle, Jax and Dimma had convinced me to start drinking again as we made out way around the pub in Greenwich.

The next few days were spent catching up with friends made while travelling around on busabout and seeing some terrible theater and some great markets.

After more drinking with Belle and Dimma on Wednesday night, and yet nore drinking with Belle, Clint and Nicvel on thursday night, I am heading over to see Kate and have a big London night out with the Gadsby's. It will be my first BIG night out and I am ready and raring to go... I hope I dont get sick again.

Day One back in London

2009-10-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

Well, when I arrived in London I felt like all was good. I made my way from Luton Airport to Deptford train station with little to talk about apart from the daylight robbery that is London public transport costs. At Deptford I was picked up by Belle and taken back to the new apartment she shares with Jax. I had a great evening with Jax, Belle and Mikey which included a small meal before going to sleep at around 11pm.

At about 1:30am I awoke to the worst stomach cramp of my life and it wasn’t till about 4:30am that I was able to go back to sleep. The next morning I felt marginally better, but after being told by every doctor’s surgery that they wouldn’t see me because I was only here temporarily I started to bemoan the stupid British health system that requires me to register in order to see a GP.

After doing more research on the internet I found a walk in centre that was about 4kms away and decided to walk there. It took me about an hour to get there and then another 30 minutes waiting. When I did eventually see a doctor, he was very helpful and even shoved his finger up my butt. That is not as much fun as it sounds, I can tell you that much.

At the end of it all it seems that I have some form of intestinal infection that my body will (hopefully) heal itself over the next few days. Being as I come over here to see Mr Scruff on Saturday night, and I have now had to cancel that due to my health, I am expecting my body to get better soon so that the entire UK trip is not a waste!

Berlin Week 2

2009-10-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

I have very little to say about Berlin that I have not already said in previous posts, nor can I tell you anything new, due to the fact that I barely left the apartment during the 2nd week. I came down with what I originally thought was a slight case of food poisoning, and since turned full blown gastro. Possibly the least fun of my entire trip, especially considering I was still going out and looking at apartments every day, and then coming home to be doubled over with stomach cramps later in the evening. What made that even worse was that Paula was sick at the same time, so it made us somewhat cranky at each other as we both felt like shit.

At the end of the week, I was off to London, still feeling sickly and leaving Paula to find an apartment on her own. Not the ideal situation, but unfortunately it couldn’t be helped. Hopefully by the time I return to Berlin I’ll have a place to stay and I’ll be able to eat again.

Berlin Week 1

2009-10-17T01:53:00.000-07:00

The vibrant city of Berlin has welcomed me back into its loving arms by turning on some balmy temperatures. The last week has averaged about 7’C, and being as it is only October, has served as a warning that I am really going to need some serious winter clothes to survive in this place over the next 6 months. My pathetic scarf, hoodie and jeans combination are about as much competition for the cold wind storming from the Siberian wilderness as the Polish army were for the Germans all those years ago.

All that being said, it has been absolutely fantastic being a resident of Berlin. There are obviously some teething problems, for instance, I took the 40 euro I saved by talking my way out of a fine on the train, and bought a two week gym membership. Yes, that’s $AUD80 for a two week membership. Making matters worse is that I have only gone twice and I doubt I will go again, due to the fact that the gym is located near Paula’s work and she hasn’t got any shifts for the remainder of the time I am here. Oh well, easy come, easy go. Going to the gym has confirmed one rumour, and that is that yes, they are big motherfuckers in Germany. On an average I would say that the guys at the Berlin gym were about 10kgs heavier (not fatter) than the people at my old gym in Cannington. So now I look even weedier than before. Great.

Another issue that I have had to get over while being here is my obvious lack of any German language skills. Germany is great for the tourist because everyone speaks some level of English, and most are fluent. This is great when you are travelling through and want to be able to eat, drink and play wherever you like without wondering how you will make people understand you, however, as I am now trying to become a Berliner, it only serves as a reminder of just how not German I am. This will hopefully change over time, and I have my beginner German course starting in mid November, so I would hope once I can at least have some simple conversations in German I will feel less of an outsider. Another possibility is that I should just shut up as I have only been here a week and if it didn’t feel foreign and different I probably wouldn’t love it so much.

Throughout my travels I have always said that I start to love a place once I feel comfortable in it. Berlin and Budapest were the exceptions to that rule, as I loved them within the first 3 hours I was there. Berlin is, however, growing even lovelier in my eyes. While the past week has been tough in some ways, with the cold, the expensive public transport, the lack of German and what looks to be the imminent impossibility of me ever getting a job here being the prime examples. I find myself still amazed by the culture, design and history of the city at every turn. Even the simplest things, such as a few days ago when Paula and I went out to Pankow so she could look at a prospective rental property. We walked from the flat back to the nearest train station and just as we got to the train station, we walked over the double line of bricks that marks the spot of the old Berlin wall. I found myself being hugely excited about the fact that I would have to walk over that hugely historical site every day on my journey to and from work should we live in that apartment, and it is moments like that which separate Berlin from any other city in my eyes.

The last week has been full of going around Berlin, to areas I hadn’t been before, in search of apartments. I am staying in the very hip Friedrichshain in the cities east, but it’s a little expensive so we are looking in up and coming (and slightly dodgy areas) such as Neukolln. It has good to get away from the typically touristy things that one does in a city and move into something more based in reality such as finding a flat, or going to the supermarket, or just cooking a meal in a house instead of a hostel.

On Saturday night Paula and I were getting ready to go out to an as yet undecided club, when her housemate invited us along to go to a party at the Villa nightclub. The tram ride alone was hilarious, as it was filled with beer swilling party goers at 1:30am, all heading out to party. As I was told by a local, that tram is the party tram as it goes through a few of the nightlife areas and runs regularly and all night on the weekends. By the time we got the the Villa I was ready to dance, both because I was excited, and freezing. The Villa is (surprise surprise) an old Villa. It is a massive old house that is filled with graffiti, lights, bars and minimalist techno sounds. Unfortunately the music was not to my liking, but everything else about the place was uber cool, and depending on DJ’s I will definitely have to head back there some time. Although,. With the huge array of nightlife option in Berlin, I may spend a while experiencing everywhere I haven’t been, before I start going to place I have already seen.

Berlin : Round Two

2009-10-12T03:48:00.000-07:00

To get from Munich to Berlin, I tried out something that is pretty huge in Germany. It is known as ‘rideshare’ and it is basically organized hitchhiking. There is a website where people advertise that they are driving from Munich to Berlin (for example) of a certain date and at a certain time, and they have spare seats available for (eg) 30 euro. You contact the driver and let him know you wish to get a lift and meet him and the arranged time and off you go. Considering the train from Munich to Berlin was 70 euro, this is a pretty sweet deal.

So I was driven to Berlin by a middle aged man named Jochen. He had lived in Berlin since 1972 and vividly remembered the Berlin wall coming down and going out and being part of the celebrations at that time. He drove at an average speed of about 170kmh, and it seemed that the lines that separated lanes on the Autobahn were merely for decoration, as were his indicators. However, we got to Berlin in about 5 hours, which for 600km is a pretty good effort.

Jochen dropped me off in the west of the city and I needed to get to the east. I jumped on the subway, and just got a short trip ticket, being as during the five days I was in Berlin previously, I had never been asked to produce a valid ticket. Not once. As is Murphy’s Law, about 5 stations along, a ticket inspector comes along, sees my ticket and asks me to get off the train. He then explains that a short trip ticket is for a maximum of 3 stops and he is going to fine me 40 euro. I was then forces to use my superior brain, stunning him with logic and argument, and while he put up a bit of a fight, he ended up letting me go with just buying another, and this time correct, ticket. Taylor 1 – Berlin 0.

It was then a long irritating train journey to Ostkreuz and then a fair walk with a suitcase that is quickly falling apart, til I got to Paula’s house. Her kooky flatmates let me in to her place, which reminds me a lot of the Broome street house I used to live in. Full of artsy people, messy, but with plenty of soul. Even though it could do with some form of floor covering and a coat of paint, it seems to be quite the bohemian place to live.

Kirchberg – Weekend 3

2009-10-07T09:09:00.000-07:00

Slowly over the next few days, the stupidity of me backing one work van into the other was forgotten. The next group of Oktoberfestians began to show up and before I knew it, the weekend was on us once more. This time we had more guests than spots on the coach, so I had to drive another busload of people into Munich, stay there all day, and not drink due to the fact that I would have to drive home at the end of it. Due to this party pooping problem, I didn’t hang around at Oktoberfest and instead went into Munich.

Unfortunately for me, it was a public holiday celebration the reunification of Germany, and hence nothing at all was open. So I spent the day sitting in the Wombats hostel lounge, using their free WiFi and allowing everyone to believe that I was a guest. Being as I had stayed the before, I didn’t feel guilty about this, and it allowed me a lot of time to Skype people and sort of some issues that had been getting put off due to my lack of internet access. At the end of the night I drove a bunch of drunk people home, and then went directly to bed so I could avoid as much of the annoyance as possible. You see, I have realized in the last six months, that possibly my least favourite thing in the world, is hanging out with drunk people when I am sober.

The next day was Sunday. The last day we would be going to Oktoberfest. I of course, was driving people and couldn’t go, even though I had been doing the lions share of drives lately and the other driver would be going to Oktoberfest for the 6th straight time. I put this down to karma for my crashing the van, and got on with it. I was just driving people to Munich airport, so at least I didn’t have to hang around with drunk people.

By the time Monday rolled around I was on the home stretch and could feel it. I had three drives to do, and was quite happy with that as it would keep me busy and make the day go faster. I had one drive left to do Tuesday and it was in to Munich, so Lauren and Danielle came with me and after we dropped the guests in town we had some lunch and a little walk around town before coming home and chilling out together for the last time before we all go up and left Kirchberg the next morning.

Oktoberfest Weekend 2 – More of the same…

2009-09-29T12:33:00.001-07:00

As the crew for the second Oktoberfest weekend began to enter the chalet, two things became clear. This was going to be another weekend full of booze, and that I do not have the youth, liver, or energy for this much drinking. There was a group of seven Scots, who were understandably drinking the bar dry, and taking the other guests along with them. They were a great laugh though and made for some very amusing moments, especially when one of them lost a bet and had to lose his kilt and shirt and run down the street in the raw. Of course, someone immediately stole his clothes, and therefore he stood around in the bar in the raw until the weight of public opinion demanded he be given back his clothes.

Saturday morning was the first beerfest trip for this group, but I was unable to attend due to having to pick up some people at Salzburg airport and drive them direct to Munich for the festivities. I then drove back to Kirchburg and thoroughly enjoyed the day on my own, skyping Trent and Tess, and also Paula for most of the afternoon. I was asleep by the time the bus got home, but when waking up the next morning I heard that I had missed quite a spectacle.

Apparently one of the Americans in the group had let the alcohol overcome his safety net and got a bit racist with a friend of the French Canadians, who was of an Arab background. When this led to push and shove one of the Frenchies cracked him in the back of the head with a stein, smashing the glass and cutting the Americans head open. He needed ten stitches after he had spilled his blood all over the place and got everyone kicked out of the tent.

Sunday morning I woke up refreshed after ten hours sleep and was ready for the craziness of another Oktoberfest day. The bus ride into Munich was boring and sleepy, the same as last week, but without the bus breaking down. When we arrived at the beer hall, it was nearly empty. The staff greeted us with a smile and asked us if we wouldn’t mind not breaking a stein over anyones head today. I had a beer with the work crew and then went to find Steph, Kat and Nikki at the Hoffbrau tent. I hadn’t seen these guys since La Tomatina, so it was great to catch up, knowing that I won’t see them again until May. As the day wore on I found myself wandering aimlessly around again, and like last week wishing that the bus would leave for home at 6pm instead of 8pm. Finally 8pm rolled around and I quickly fell asleep on the bus, waking up briefly to make my way to my bed and fell into the deep, sweet sleep that comes after a day of beer.

The next day I slept until 9:30am, before getting up and going for a run. I had managed to keep my weight pretty stable over my holiday because even though I was drinking a lot, I was also walking 15kms a day. Since arriving in Kirchburg I was drinking as much, if not more, but not doing any walking, and it was starting to tell on my body. After my much needed spot of exercise I had a run to Salzburg and then later in the afternoon a run to Munich. Both were very uneventful, except for when I returned home and did one of the most bonehead things of my life.

I arrived back into Kirchburg after a late run to Munich, and arrived back ready for a beer and running on autopilot. I got to the chalet, glanced onto our front yard, saw that the Blue van wasn’t there, and proceeded to back the white van I was driving right up to the back of the block. This stopped with a bang and I rammed the back of the white van into the front of the blue van. Apparently it was there after all. Shevy came out and was understandable pissed, and I felt like a total moron. I didn’t feel like a beer anymore, so I went to bed without my dinner so I could wallow in my own stupidness.

The next morning consisted of me doing a run to the tip after separating the rubbish and cleaning the vans. I tried to avoid the topic of the van with Shevy, as while I’m sure he’s not going to fire me for it, it is an incredibly dumb thing to do, and I don’t consider myself a dumb person. Later that day I dropped the French Canadians at the Munich airport, and came home, parking the van very carefully and chilling out for the rest of the evening. It looks as if the staff will be going mountain biking tomorrow, I am looking forward to this, but as my travel insurance ran out about two days ago, I am hoping I can come out of it unscathed.

Oktoberfest – My God, it’s full of beer…

2009-09-25T07:18:00.000-07:00

The Friday before Oktoberfest started was full of pickups from airports and other busy work. Most of the guests seemed pretty cool and easy to talk to so the night kicked on pretty easily, and before I knew it, it was well past my bedtime, considering I had to be up before 6am to get on the bus to Munich.

Oktoberfest started with a snag, as our coach full of 50 excited yet still very sleepy people, broke down about 10kms out of Kirchburg. We waited around for about 30 minutes while a new coach was organized and we were soon on our way to Munich. We got there around 10am and the beer isn’t served until noon, so there was a fair amount of sitting around and waiting. The neo nazi’s (I’m not joking) were getting a little impatient on the table next to us, especially when the beer started getting served and their table was the last to get any. The day proceeded along a familiar plot line. That being; Christopher gets drunk. Christopher talks to random women (hopefully German). Christopher finds out random women are 17 and still in high school. Christopher considers his options. Christopher walks away. Okay, possibly that last one was more because we got kicked out of the Spatenbrau tent we were in and had to leave. Oh well.

So I went looking for Nicole, who was in the Lowenbrau tent, which was now blocked off so I couldn’t get in. She told me to say that I was in the Siemens Financial Services team in Box 15. It worked, after a fair amount of arguing with the door staff, and I found Nicole who told me that there is no Siemens financial services team. It was a stone cold lie. But it worked.

Nic and I had a stein and then went outside for a look around. We had both drunk all we could drink and were ready to chill out for a bit. We got to a grassed area and lay down and talked for a while. Then we play fought for a reason I don’t remember, which was when Nic knocked my phone out of my hand and it fell into pieces. The next thing I remember, she was gone, and I wouldn’t see her again until her birthday in Melbourne in May.

I walked back to the meet point where I found a girl on the verge of tears asking people if she could use their phone. She was from San Fransisco, her phone didn’t worked and she had lost her friends. My phone also didn’t work but one of the other guys from the chalet let her use his phone and we kept her company until her friend rocked up. I was very tired by this stage and slept pretty much all the way home on the bus.

The next morning I woke up quite late and was happy to see that the Oktoberfest bus had already left. About 15 people decided that two days in a row was just too much for them and were planning to go out for a walk/mountain bike ride. I was happy to have some downtime as I was feeling pretty sick in the lungs, due to my chest infection continuously following me throughout all of Europe over the past 3 months. I spent most of the day either on the internet or sitting around in the sun. That night the crew that didn’t go to Oktoberfest kicked on hard, with me working behind the bar. It was actually a lot of fun to be at the bar with people that had become my friends over the last few days. The bar was already pumping by the time the busload of Oktoberfestians returned, and once they joined the party it all went ballistic. People were drunk, dancing on tables, naked and noisy. By midnight when I went to bed due to needing to drive a 6am transfer to the airport, it was a den of noisy debauchery. My earplugs did very little to stop the noise and I had a very poor nights sleep. When I woke up at 5:30am the next morning, Shevy (my boss) and a few guests were still clinging onto the previous evening, even as Shevy’s wife Bianca set up for breakfast around them.

I did my airport transfers that day, and spent a bit of time on the net while most people watched movies as they were far too shattered to do anything else. The next day was a similar story as people were still recovering from a monster weekend, and I was still driving people to airports to be on their way home. We’re now pretty quiet, waiting for the next weekend crew to do the same thing all over again.

Kirchburg – Working for the first time in four months.

2009-09-25T07:17:00.000-07:00

Well, my worries about the stopover at the Madrid airport were partly founded, as mine and Nic’s planes were both delayed about an hour. Nowhere near as bad as the eleven hours when I was trying to get to Paris, but irritating none the less, as Paula had come down from Berlin to see me for the day in Stuttgart and I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible. I didn’t get in till after midnight, but every moment with her was fantastic. Unfortunately after 15 hours, I had to be on my way to Salzburg where Shevy was to pick me up from the train station and take me back to Kirchburg, where I would be working for the next 3 weeks.

My job with Alpen-rider is as a driver. I am writing this blog entry while sitting in my work van in a no parking area at the Munich airport. I’m an hour early for a flight from London that 4 customers are on, so I need to wait for them to take them the 2 hours back to Kirchburg. It’s not terribly interesting work, but I do get at least 3 days at Oktoberfest, and all accommodation, most food and all beer for free while I am at the chalet.

I got in quite late at night on Tuesday and didn’t really do anything except eat, have a few drinks with the other staff, all of which except for Shevy’s Austrian wife Bianca, and the token Canadian, Hannah, are Australian. The next morning the whole staff went out for canyoning. I hadn’t done it before as I knew I’d be doing it for free here, but after doing it, I wish I’d done it both times. It’s an absolute blast, abseiling down waterfalls, jumping into pools through waterfalls, sliding down waterfalls. Yeah, lots of stuff with waterfalls.

After canyoning it was my first opportunity to take the work van out and experience driving on the other side of the road. I may have hit a few kerbs, as the roads and thinner and the van wider than what I am used to. The weirdest thing is that I put the clutch down with the same foot, but I have to change gears with my opposite hand. I’m sure it wont take me too long to get used to it, however.

We had a big bbq that night as all the guests would be arriving the next day. It was good to just hang out with the staff and get to know new friends. After a fairly big night on the Jagies and various other weird shit, we all turned in, knowing it would be a busy day the next day.

Lisbon – The Jewel in Portugal’s Crown

2009-09-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

Nic and I arrived at the excellent Poets hostel in Lisbon at about 6pm, still tired from the lack of sleep in Lagos and hungry for a feed. After checking in we went out into the streets of Lisbon and found a decent place to eat that wasn’t too expensive. It was immediately clear that Lisbon is a city with soul, the place seethes with culture, art and beautiful architecture. Little streets wind their way up and down Lisbon’s streets, tagged with graffiti and adorned with street art are dirty and grungy, but safe. Nic and I found ourselves walking down the main shopping strip at about 8pm on that Saturday night, and I was approached about 6 times in 5 minutes to be asked if I wanted Hashish. She blamed it on my new (awesome) hat, saying it makes me look like a tourist. I felt the fact that I was wearing Havianas and a wifebeater might have given that away even without the hat.

We got back to the hostel and Nic had a short nap, whereas I had discovered that the WiFi at Poets was the best we’d had at any hostel, so I downloaded a few things that I needed for my computer, before nodding off for a kip. We woke up at 11:30pm and after a short debate about whether we could be assed going out, got ourselves ready and started on the Sangria. After polishing off the Sangria, we were out into the Lisbon night, arriving at Lux at about 1:30am and finding that it wasn’t exactly pumping. We walked around the club, reportedly part owned by John Malkovich, and I was very impressed with both the layout and the quality. As the night wore on, the club quickly filled and by 4am it was absolutely jamming. Unfortunately the quality of music was particularly poor, but as I was partying in Lisbon, with Nic and a few German girls I had met that night, I ignored the shithouse music and just had a good time. Nic and I made our exit at 5:30am and got a taxi back to the hostel, deciding when we got there that we wanted some ham and cheese sandwiches which resulted in drunken cooking. Always a messy exercise.

We got out and about the next day at about 1pm, walking around town and looking at some of the areas we’d not gone through the previous day. I got some more credit for my stupid Spanish Vodafone, which proved to be a 1hour mission, but at least I had credit again. We then walked up to the top of the hill and went into the Castle. It was a pretty cool castle, however the entrance was not terribly well signposted and we ended up walking the long way around it before finding how to get in. It had a great vantage point out over Lisbon and the harbor, although the haziness limited how far you could see. We got back to the hostel and still hadn’t heard from the girls who we’d met in Lagos, who were apparently going to be at our hostel in Lisbon that night, so Nic decided to take a snooze. By 10:30pm we still hadn’t heard anything and we were both wrecked from the last three days so Nic and I made the decision to have a quiet one and stay in. About 5 minutes later there was a knock at the door, and I opened it to see Megan, one of the girls. They’d missed their bus and had to catch a later train, and were keen to go out due to it being Annabel’s birthday the next day. We went out at about 11:45pm, searching for somewhere to eat. On a Sunday night in Lisbon, this is not a particularly easy exercise. Eventually the girls met up with some of their other friends and we found a place to eat, but with neither Nic nor I being hungry, it all seemed like it had become too much of a production, so we said our goodbyes and happy birthdays and made our way home.

The next morning we had to drag our asses out of bed and get to the Lisbon airport. It all worked out pretty easy, and we were saying farewell and thank you to Portugal after an awesome week within her borders. I did have a 6 hour stopover in Madrid to look forward to and after the debacle that was the last time I was at Madrid airport, I was not exactly filled with hope that things would go smoothly. Nic only had a three hour stopover so I said goodbye to her as she went through security. I probably wouldn’t see her again until Melbourne in May, which is sad because we travel really well together, with a balance of downtime, sightseeing and partying. I’m sure we’ll be back to our old habits for her birthday in May.

Lagos – Booze, Beaches and Boats

2009-09-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

Nic and I got off our uneventful seven hours train ride from Porto into the blazing heat of Portugal’s Algarve region at about 6pm. We had written down directions to the Rising Cock hostel, but still had a few issues finding it, due mostly to the length of the walk to the hostel, from the train station. After checking in and dumping our stuff in our room, Nic and I were both famished so we walked down the road to get some of the famous Portuguese chicken we had been recommended. It was fantastic chicken, and we felt better after eating. Well enough in fact to go back to the hostel and start drinking the three litres of Sangria we had lugged from Porto. After a few hours on the Sangria spent acquainting ourselves with the hostel and the nearly entirely Australian clientele, we decided to go to bed reasonably early due to the fact that we were booked to do the infamous Rising Cock booze cruise the next day, and we felt that we should be fairly lucid before beginning that epic, alcohol fueled adventure.

The next morning we woke up for Mamma’s famous crepes. The couple who run the hostel are known as Mamma and Pappa, and every morning mamma cooks crepes for the guests between 9:30-11:30am. They were delicious and a great way to start the day, being tasty and free. Unfortunately, while at breakfast we were given the news that the boat cruise had been postponed until tomorrow due to bad weather. Nic and I then decided to walk around the town a bit, and then head down to the beach. The town is pretty touristy, filled with middle aged English couples and Australians in their early twenties. The beach was packed, and as with pretty much all other Mediterranean beaches, lacking any real waves. It was sand though, and being surrounded by sandstone cliffs it was gorgeous, and reminded me of the 12 Apostles section of the Great Ocean road.

We got back in time to have a shower and join the rest of the hostel guests in the common room where they were putting on beer and nachos as we all sat in and watched the World Cup qualifier between Hungary and Portugal. I was barracking for Hungary as I love Budapest and hate Cristiano Ronaldo, but, to the delight of most of the establishment, Portugal won the game 1-0. After the game had finished, Nic and I had downed about 6 beers each and had started on the homemade Sangria. After a few glasses of that, it was time to head out into the nightlife of Lagos. We started at Nahnahbah, which is a restaurant/bar over the road from the rising cock, before moving on the Joes Garage, which was an absolute shit hole, but Nic’s friend worked there last year so she was told she had to go in there. I think we must have been getting double shots in our vodka and redbulls once Nic introduced herself, as the night went pear-shaped very quickly after that. Neither Nic nor I have any clarity in our recollection of the night’s events, but what we can piece together is that Nic went to the loo, I disappeared, and we caught up with each other 4 hours later in the hostel. Hmmm….

The next morning we woke up still drunk and again found out the booze cruise had been postponed due to weather. We were the President and First Lady of struggle town and were not afraid to show it. After a few crepes we went back to bed for a while and waited for the drunkness to pass and the hangover to kick in. After awaking a few hours later with the hangover having definitely arrived we went to a café down the road for a full greasy English breakfast and felt much better after that. We then made our way down to the beach, where we both fell asleep for most of the afternoon. By the time dinner rolled around, Nic and I both felt that we could do with something mildly healthy, so after walking around for a while staring blankly at restaurants we decided on a Japanese buffet. It was better than it sounds, as they made everything for you as you ordered it, so nothing had been sitting in the buffet for hours. It was absolutely delicious, and because of the “all-you-can-eat” factor, we both left the restaurant absolutely stuffed. We didn’t feel like doing anything much, so we sat in the hostel, watched a movie and got an early night. Well, not an early night, but a night without drinking. That’s nearly the same thing.

The next morning we woke up for crepes and were delighted to hear that the booze cruise was definitely on. Nic and I went down to the beach for a morning swim (well, I swam, Nic lay on the beach), before getting back to the hostel in time for the 1pm start. The group met over the road at Nahnahbah and was given all you can drink sangria and beer and some fairly average curry dish for lunch before we all head out into the afternoon heat to get on the boat and make our way out into the Mediterranean. The sangria on the boat was made out of White wine, not red, and tasted like cheap goon mixed in a jar of ass. I quickly moved onto the beer as did most of the rest of the group. We all got turns to go out in the biscuit type thing and be towed behind a speed boat. It was really fun, but we managed to get massively airborne and flip it over. We hit the water hard, I felt like Jean Claude Van Damme had just kicked me in the chest, whereas Nic had hurt her neck and found it painful to turn to the left. We climbed back on the biscuit and nearly flipped it again a few times, but it was brilliant fun. After that we continued to drink and swim near the boat for another few hours before coming back to shore and returning to the hostel.

After eating, showering and buying more alcohol, we continued to drink on the Patio of the hostel. I started talking to a cool chick named Saskia about our mutual desires to become modern Pirates and pillage, plunder and loot for our own benefit. We were working out a ten year plan to make all this happen when we were joined by Saskia’s friend, Layla and the conversation moved onto less ridiculous topics. At midnight everyone left the hostel and went out to the pubs and clubs of Lagos. For some strange reason we again went to Joes Garage, which was full of world class fuckwits, mostly there for a bucks night, so I will excuse some of the behavior, but not all of it. Suffice to say that man, especially fat, unattractive men should definitely keep their clothes on at all times when in a public bar. I caught up with Saskia and Layla at the bar a bit later and we soon all left to go to InsideOut, a club down the road. On the way there it was Saskia’s brilliant idea to play “ultimate steal”. I gave her the challenge to steal a man’s shirt off his back and keep it. She got two shirts, but gave both of them back, although the photos are very amusing. Saskia wanted me to get a dude to buy me a drink. I failed. I guess I have no more luck with the lads than I do with the ladies. After a few hours of this ridiculousness, we all decided to make our way home. We left Layla with the boy she had been talking to for the last 2 hours and Saskia and I went out for a walk around Lagos.

We made our way down to the port where we found three British lads attempting to catch either fish or crabs with their bare hands. Both were right there for the taking, but their reflexes were not up to the task, muted by a lack of coordination and excessive alcohol consumption I imagine. We sat there and had a chat with them, while laughing at their pathetic efforts and girlish screams for a while before moving along the port to climb a tree and chat about piracy, life and family. All the important stuff.

We got back to the hostel at about 5am and I immediately passed out on my bead. Waking up 5 hours later, I again found that someone had eaten my ham and cheese from the fridge so I decided to go out for a big breakfast. Courtney and Jess joined me, as Nic was still fast asleep in bed, having only returned to the hostel at around 10:30am. Jess and Courtney were nice enough to share their stories of public vomiting while I was eating, but I was so hungry it really didn’t matter. We ate and then went back to the hostel, where Nic had woken up and began to pack. We would be parting with the awesome friends we had made in Lagos. It was a bit of a shame to be leaving really, as we really only just started to feel like one of the crew after the booze cruise and going out with everyone the night before. Oh well, some we will see again in Lisbon, and others will be at Oktoberfest. Travel friends come and go, but the bunch we met at the Flying Cock were as fun as any, so we said our goodbyes and got on the train to Lisbon, where we had a date with John Malkovich’s club, Lux.

Porto – Where a One Euro flight gets you…

2009-09-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

The only reason Nicole and I ever went to Porto was due to the fact that Ryanair had a special of 1euro flights from Paris to Porto on the date we wanted to head down to Portugal. We had never really had the second biggest city in Portugal in our calculations, and after arriving in the city after the flight, there seemed to be little to change our minds. We walked up the hill towards our hostel, and we were stopped by a lovely old lady who thought we looked a bit lost, and even though she spoke minimal English, did her best to give us directions.

We arrived at our hostel, which was basically just a house in the middle of the suburban concrete jungle of Porto. Our host, Anna, was absolutely lovely and helped us with all the information we would need to book a ticket to get to Lagos the next day. We walked into the middle of town to get our train ticket for the next morning and had a little look around. It was quite hot and the city was pretty empty, so we got ourselves an ice cream and walked to the supermarket. We bought some food to cook for dinner, and found the bottles of sangria that we had fallen in love with in Barcelona, so we bought a few bottles of that too. We got back to the hostel and while Nic had a nap I pottered around on the net for a while. We then got up and went and sat out in the back yard of the hostel, where they had some day beds, and whiled away the evening drinking sangria and chatting about all the crazy people we had met on our holiday so far. After dark we got dinner sorted while we drank some of the free sangria that the hostel had made from scratch in the Porto style where they use Port rather than other Brandy or other alcohol. By this time we had started talking to Charlotte, a Kiwi who had been living in Madrid for a few months and had come over to Porto on a whim as the flights were cheap. After dinner, we all walked into town to go to the river, where apparently lots of people go to drink on a Monday night, as nothing else is open. When we got down there, it was really pretty, but not exactly pumping. We sat on the river bank for a while and looked around and the old port area and the restaurants which surround it, before heading back to the hostel. At this moment, Porto started to make sense to me. Firstly, it’s a night town, not a day town. It’s never gonna be a pumping nightspot on a Monday. It’s a place to chill, relax and enjoy some good company and some good food.

Nic and I woke up early the next morning to catch our train to Lagos, and the kitchen table was all set up for breakfast, with cereal, croissants and juice. It made us wish we were staying in Porto for a little longer. Not necessarily for Porto the city, but the Yellow house hostel, which was just a joy to be at. But, we had booked Lagos, and that’s where we were headed. Getting the train on that smoky Tuesday morning, I was glad I had seen Porto, but doubted I would ever return.

Paris – The City of Lights, Love and Baguettes

2009-09-07T08:27:00.000-07:00

Waking up Monday morning after only having 3 hours sleep due to the Madrid airport debacle the day before, I assumed I would maybe get through half the day and then need a nanna nap to continue. Kate and I decided to walk into the city, check out a few things and then do the New Europe free (no charge, but you tip) Walking tour of Paris. As we walked into the city it is easy to see why people fall in love with this city, as unlike other major cities involved in World War 2, it had very little damage, and therefore has all of its amazing buildings still on show. It seems like every corner you turn, there is another beautiful old building to look at.

When we got into the city, we walked along the Seine towards the Louvre. The building of the Louvre, which is an old Palace, is massive and it needs to be as it now houses over thirty five thousand pieces. We sat around the fountain area in the centre for a while, dipping our feet in the water, as it was about 30’C, until we were approached by Lynden. Lynden is an Aussie who has been living in London for a while. It was his first day in Paris, and he noticed me wearing a wifebeater and Havianas and decided that I would be worth a chat. We talked for a bit about travelling, Paris and what to do and he decided to come on the free tour also.

When we got to Place St Michel, the meeting point for the tour, there were hundreds of students running around, sing dancing, getting people to write on them with magic marker and generally celebrating that they would be starting another year of University. St Michel is in the Latin Quarter and is a massive student area, due to one of the old historic Universities being right around the corner. One young guy came up to me and asked me to write something on his back. I figured I’d write what my tattoo means “This moment is your Eternity”, and had written “this” when he said “make it dirty, as dirty as possible”. I’m like “are you sure?” and he was, so I then wrote “this boy loves the Cock”. I could have been dirtier, but we were in public. His mate seemed to think it was amusing anyway.

So we headed off on the walking tour, seeing and learning little tidbits of information about Notre Dame, The Louvre, Paris’ beginnings, Modern Parisian life, The Arc de Triomphe, Tiulleries Gardens, The monolith, The Basilica of Sacre Coeur and heaps more. By the end, my brain was a little full of all this information, but I had had a fantastic time leaning about, and acquainting myself with the amazing city of Paris. On the way back to the hostel, Kate and I got some wine and cheese and had a night in on our balcony, discussing Paris and what we had seen that day and generally having a fairly quiet night.

I woke up on Tuesday morning as a thirty one year old. I wasn’t terribly pleased about this, but there’s no way to stop it, so all I can do is accept it. Father Time just keeps on rolling along. After breakfast I went to the internet café for a bit and it made me smile to see all the happy birthday messages from people, but also very sad because I miss all of my friends back in Australia and now scattered about Europe as well. I tried to reply to some messages and emails, but the French keyboard is all fucked up, switching a whole bunch of letters from the English one and therefore driving me fucking nuts when I try to type anything. After I had composed myself, I went back to the hostel and Kate and I went into the city once again. We had seen the Eiffel tower and Arc de Triomphe the day before, but we hadn’t gone right up to them, and we planned to do that.

The Arc de Triomphe is hugely impressive from up close. I had no idea how truly massive it is, and was also blown away by the intricacies of its decoration. The roundabout that surrounds it is also worth a few mentioning as it is a calamity of insane driving and balls in the wind aggressiveness. No insurance company in the world will cover you if you have an accident on that roundabout, because one happens about every few hours on average. The major problem is that the people on the roundabout have to give way to the people entering the roundabout, hence traffic flows and then stops along the roundabout with no determinable progression.

After the Arc de Triomphe, we had planned to head down to the Eiffel tower, via the Trocadero Gardens. It’s a fairly short walk from the Arc do Triomphe, but it started raining very heavily and we decided this might be a trip for another day. We jumped on a subway and went into the shopping area of town, as I had decided that I wanted some new clothes on my birthday and Kate was chasing some stuff also. I got myself a new jacket as my birthday present to myself and then had a Royal Cheese and a glass of beer at a Parisian McDonalds, in honour of the scene from Pulp Fiction. It was great! We then went up the top of the Printemps (like a Myer) building, where they had an observation deck. It was just one or two stories above the rest of the Parisian rooftops, so you got a fantastic view of the city, with the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower understandably dominating the skyline.

After all this, the weather had improved so we went back to the Eiffel Tower, and even though I had been looking at it for two days, it is still pretty amazing to look up to it up close and know that it the real Tower. We walked towards it, as did many other tourists, heads turned skyward in wide eyed amazement. After walking around the base, taking loads of photos and generally enjoying the fact that we were in Paris, we made our way up through the Trocadero gardens and sat on the steps for a while, soaking it all in. Some rollerblade kids were zooming around, doing tricks on the stairs while tourists watched them, or took photos of themselves in front of the tower.

We made our way back to the hostel and put some dry clothes on before heading out to Montmartre for some drinks and a birthday meal. On our way through the bohemian, artistic and seedy suburb, we walked up to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur, which sits atop Montmartre, named thus as it was the Mount where the Romans performed their executions, hence Mount of the Martyrs. This basilica is a brilliant white church which brings together architectural styles from the Gothic, Roman and Byzantine periods. There were hundreds of people out on the steps of the basilica as it has a fantastic view out over the city, and we sat around ourselves for a while, enjoying the night view of Paris.

Making our way down the stairs, we saw the police arresting some dude who had been causing trouble and it was clear that the Parisian police do not fuck around. This guy got owned, hard. We then walked through the streets of Montmartre, walking past many full bistros and bars until we came to one that had seats available, and they had crepes on the menu, so I was sold. Upon further investigation it was clear I had not chosen the cheapest place to eat, but it was my birthday and we were already here, so we stayed. I ate my excellent crepe and we shared a fantastic crème brulee before heading off to the Moulin Rouge, which is not very impressive at all, and then taking the short walk back to the hostel.

We woke up on Wednesday morning to hear that Thursday and Friday were going to be shit weather, so we decided to bring our Montmartre walking tour forward as we had originally planned to go into the Louvre today. The Montmartre tour was excellent with the sights including some of the places Amelie was filmed, where Picasso ate and lived, where Van Gogh lived and numerous other little interesting tads of information. At the end of the tour we sat down for a glass of wine with some of the other tourists and Alex, our guide and had a nice chat about Paris, and what it’s like to be a tour guide, as I have been toying with the idea of doing this myself in Berlin for a while now.

We came back to the hostel and had a quick nap before heading out again to do the Fat Tire Night Bike Tour of Paris. The night bike tour started with us nearly getting killed by a French bus as we followed our tour guide through an intersection and through a red light. Not the greatest start, but the tour itself was fantastic, and ended with a wine filled boat cruise down the Seine. Adam was a great tour guide also, with a humour and intellect that you don’t always get with Americans. The night ended as we once again walked past the Eiffel Tower, and this time we got to see it go all sparkly, which was pretty amazing.

Thursday morning was a fairly late start as we had a bit of wine the night before. We finally got up and to the Louvre at about 1pm and expected massive crowds, due to the weather being average. To my pleasant surprise the crowds were fairly low and I was able to walk up to the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo with a minimum of fuss. The Mona Lisa was very impressive, and not actually as small as I had been led to believe. It was pretty awesome to know you were looking at the actual Mona Lisa, and it went a long way to ease the irritation I felt at the rude and pushy people jostling for a slightly better photo position around me. The Venus de Milo was also pretty cool, because of the “it’s the real one” factor, although I must admit I’d prefer the Gummy de Milo, from The Simpsons. One of the more interesting things about the Venus de Milo is that they don’t actually know who it is. They assume it is Aphrodite, but due the fact that the arms have never been found, and hence there is nothing to give away which goddess she is, they just don’t know for sure. After seeing the big two sights of the Louvre, we walked through the ancient Etruscan, Greek and Egyptian sections, then sculpture and then Napoleon III’s apartments. After that we decided we had had enough art and culture for one day and went looking for a beer and a meal.

We had our meal, and like everything else in Paris, it was pretty expensive. The weather had cleared a little in this time and we decided to go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower. The line wasn’t too bad as the crowds were relatively small due to the inclement weather earlier in the day. It was stupidly windy at the top, but is an amazing way to see the sprawl of the city. Plus, it’s cool to know you’re at the top of the Eiffel tower. After the freezing wind at the top, it was quite warm down on the ground as we passed through the Trocadero Gardens to catch the Metro to Blanche. At Blanche we walked up the hill, past the Moulin Rouge to the Café Des Moulin’s, this is the café used in the film, Amelie. We sat down, had a hot chocolate and a crème brulee, got some photos in the café, said hello to the gnome from the movie that sits proudly on the bar and we were then on our way back to our hostel. That night we got a bottle of red and stayed in, as we’d both been burning through the money over the past few days. It was nice to take it easy for a night, as Paris has so much to see, that it’s easy to be on the move all the time trying to see everything.

Friday morning came around and we weren’t exactly sure what we should do. I had noticed the night before that my bucket of shit camera had lost all my photos from the last few days, including the Louvre, the top of the Eiffel and Paris by night. I was understandably pissed and we spent the most part of the morning and early afternoon searching for a shop with the retrieval software to get these photos back. In the end, the language barrier proved too much and I gave up on this mission. I ended up just buying a new camera, the same model that was stolen in Barcelona, and then we went to Notre Dame for a few hours. Notre Dame is an amazingly beautiful cathedral, probably the most impressive I have seen in Europe, and is architecturally advanced for its time. The relic of the crown of thorns was on display, as it is the first Friday of every month. While it is not the actually crown of thorns, as the King who purchased it believed it was, it is still about 500 years old, and was pretty cool to see. After we left Notre Dame we headed home to get ready for the pub crawl.

The pub crawls started with us waiting in Place St Michel, watching some awesome break dancing while we waited to sign up. The first bar was crap, with expensive drinks and rude attendants, but we didn’t stay there for long and we were soon on our way to the next bar. This is where things got a little crazy as we were getting 5euro cocktails and a double shot with each drink. I was talking to a guy from Lebanon who says that the country is safer than France (good to know) and some girls from New Zealand and the UK. We then went to the next bar and were still getting double shots and reasonably cheap drinks. By the next bar it was all too much for Kate as shit had begun to lose her shit. I took her home on a very interesting Metro ride and we were back at the hostel by 1am. Somehow I had still spent 50euro, so it’s a good thing we never got to the club.

The next morning we both woke up feeling pretty average. It took us a while just to get out of the house and when we did we made it into town and got some food and just sat around on the grass near the Louvre. When you actually sit there for a while, you see a lot of sparrows, pigeons and rats. They’re everywhere. When we became tired of watching the rats chase the sparrows, we walked through the Tuilleries and then made our way back to the hostel. We chilled out for a bit and watched some movies on my laptop, before heading into town to have a bottle of wine and some food on Pont des Arts, which translates to “the Artists bridge”. It connects the Louvre with the Academy, and is a pedestrian only bridge where students and youth (I know, what am I doing there, right?) go to dink, play music, sing, eat and generally have a good time. It was great fun meeting a whole bunch of French kids and a few travelling Germans aswell.

Sunday morning it was time to get up and pack. Kate was flying back to England and I had to move to my other hostel where Nic would show up later in the evening before our flight to Porto on Monday. I spent most of the day using the WiFi at St Christophers Hostel to upload photos as the last hostel didn’t have WiFi. It was also awesome to be able to watch the MotoGp for the first time in ages, but unfortunately it was another procession for Rossi. When I checked into my room I realized that I needed a padlock for my locker (my old padlock was a casualty of the Barcelona bag stealing) so I went out to find one. Nothing was open, so no padlock, but I did see a scooter police chase, with a dude on a scooter getting chased the wrong way down a one way street by a French cop on a scooter. Amusing stuff. I then took a nap in my room before watching some tennis and some AFL in the chillout area while waiting for Nics Busabout bus to arrive. When she finally got there we arranged our check-in for the spastic Ryanair flights that depart from some random spastic airport that meant we had to be up and out of our hostel by 5:30am.

Waking up at stupid o’clock is never fun, and my last morning in Paris was no different. The good thing however is that the Paris metro is excellent. It’s a little pricey, but when it is running there are trains pretty much every 5-7 minutes. We got to the point where the Beauvais airport shuttle point by 6:45am and then we arrived at the airport just before 8am. After a bit of luggage juggling to get both our bags under the weight limit we were on the plane and on our way to Porto. Ryanair sucks balls. The seats don’t lean back and they’re trying to sell you some random crap every five minutes. Oh well, at least I wasn’t stuck at the airport for 10 hours like the fight to Paris, so I guess I should be happy.

My week in Paris was amazing in every way. I think possibly this was helped by nearly everyone I know saying that Paris was dirty, the people rude, the crime high and generally overrated. I experienced none of these things. Instead I experienced the beauty of the French capital, its great food, its lovely people and its safe, well policed streets. I think the French pastime is public shows of affection. You couldn’t turn a corner or walk through a park without seeing some very public macking going on. This could obviously be tourists, but I think it is the passion and lust sweeping through every alley, over every bridge and past every street lamp that fills locals and tourists alike with these feelings of affection toward each other. Paris is a just so full of history, beauty and love that one cannot ignore this. It is Paris’ gift to all who come here.

Madrid – Hot town, Cool reputation. Fucked Airport.

2009-09-01T10:59:00.000-07:00

The bus rolled into a sweaty Madrid at around 7pm on the 27th of August. There were three full buses departing Valencia the day after La Tomatina, so the hostel would have nearly 150 people to deal with. Luckily, the bus I was on got to Madrid first so I was checked in by 8pm and out with some of the crew for a nice Thai meal down the road before going to bed and being out like a light the moment my head hit the pillow. Madrid seems to have a pretty dull reputation amongst most busabouters, being not a cool as Barcelona and a delay on everyone’s calendar on the way to the super hyped San Sebastian, I was keen to get out and experience the city and see for myself what it had to offer.

I was up early on the Friday, eager to beat the afternoon sun on a walk around Madrid to check out some stuff I had heard about. Matt, Sarah, Kat and Nikki tagged along, and we met up with some other girls that they knew along the way. We went to Plaza Mayor, where people were burned at the stake for having opposing religious views during the Spanish inquisition, and also where the oldest running restaurant in the world is, it’s been in continuous operation since the 13th century. We then went up past the Palacio Real and then up to the Templo de Debod, which is an actual Egyptian temple that was given to Spain by Egypt and now sits on a hill, looking out over the suburbs of Madrid. After that we walked through the Plaza de Espana, where I realized I need to brush up on my Spanish history as for some reason I thought Don Quixote was a Mexican, but being as there is a giant statue of him in Madrid, I am obviously wrong. We then made our way down the Gran Via and down through the Puerta del Sol before arriving back at the hostel.

That afternoon we did a tapas tour. For 8euro we went to 4 tapas bars, getting a glass of sangria at each one and a plate of tapas. It was excellent value and a lot of fun to hang out with the crew in real Spanish places. By the end of the afternoon, we were all pretty tipsy as we were buying extra sangria at most bars, and upon coming home we all retired for a siesta. I could get used to this lifestyle. That night we met at 9pm for a bit to eat before heading out to the hostel up the road that has a bar and is also the start point of the pub crawl. We were already pretty trashed by the time we left on the pub crawl at 1:30am, and headed out into the early Madridian morning. The pub crawl seemed like less of a pub crawl, and more of a club crawl as every place we went to was packed, loud and sweaty, hence by the time we got to the last place, a salsa club, we were already pretty sick of the crowd. We attempted a few hours of salsa, and it was made clear to me once again that I cannot dance for shit. At around 5am we stumbled back to our hostel, with the obligatory stop for a kebab along the way.

I woke up at 11:30am the next day and felt like four buckets of shit. I had planned to go to the Prado Museum today, but instead we all decided to get some food at the supermarket and go for a picnic on the huge Parque del buen Retiro, which was a giant park on the east side of the city. After a walk that took way longer than it should have, we arrived at the park and settled down in a shady spot next to the manmade lake in the centre of the park. It was a lot prettier than I expected, with rowboats making their way around the lake and people playing music on the fringes. Everybody was out enjoying the Saturday afternoon sunshine, and it was a great place to sit down and spend time with friends that I would soon lose as they head off to San Sebastian and I fly directly to Paris. After a spending most of the day at the park, we came back to the hostel where I had to confirm some things about my flight before going out for dinner with Nikki and Kat. I bade them farewell as they went off to a salsa night and I came back to my room to pack and ended up chatting to some American dudes in my room, about the states, travelling and living in New York.

The next morning I woke up refreshed from a decent night’s sleep, and ready to tackle the Madrid metro system, and make my way to the airport. As it turned out, I did not need to be worried about the metro system, it was as easy as pie, however the day was still young, and my 90 minute flight to Paris would turn out to be quite epic.

I arrived to the airport and found my check-in desk, no great dramas there, apart from the face that Spaniards (like most Europeans) dont understand the concept of an orderly moving line, and just think they can do whatever the fuck they like. But, I held back my annoyance, as it made no matter to me, we were all gonna get on the place, sooner or later, so I waited patiently. I went to the gate, and the gate had changed, again, not a huge issue as I soon found my gate, and even though boarding was due to be nearly over, there was still a long line of people trailing away from the gate. Forty minutes later, we still hadn’t boarded so we were all then told there would be a 2 hour delay, we were then given a 6 euro voucher to spend on a snack and drink of some description, and then I went back to my seat and continued playing my psp. Unbeknownst to me, they again changed the gate, and it was only purely by accident that I found my new gate while I had gone to get something to eat. We boarded the plane about 30 min late and then waited on the plane for another 30 minutes before taking off. It was now about 4:30pm and my plane was supposed to depart at 1:45pm. We flew for about 20minutes, I slept most of that time, then woke up and felt that there was something wrong with the plane. We had been flying for more than enough time to get up to cruising altitude, however we were still quite low. The plane seemed to be in turbulence and was trying to climb, but it was as if it just didn’t have the power to do anything about it. It was then announced that there was technical problem and we would be returning to Madrid airport. That 20minutes back to Madrid airport was the scariest time I’ve ever had on a plane. The plane wanted to buck and dive, and there were quite a few times where I felt it was losing power. We only seemed to be a few thousand feet up, so every time the plane turned you could get a very clear few of the ground below. We eventually got back to Madrid airport, and landed without any issues, and I was glad to still be alive. After landing I went to the Veuling airlines office with all the other passengers, and it turned out that we would have another plane at 9:10pm, about 2 hours away. I met Julie, a French girl wanting to get back home to Lille after a big weekend in Madrid, and we went to the bar to use our second 6 euro voucher on a few beers. Julie and I had a great time drinking some beer and discussing the travel habits of Australian’s compared to the French, and eventually we made our way back to our gate and boarded the plane at about 9:30pm. We sat on the plane for about an hour; always being told it was an issue with air traffic control before I again pulled out my psp and played that for an hour or so. At 11pm we would be getting a new crew, and when they arrived we could leave. I spent this time talking to Julie, and then by 11:30pm, we were told that we would need to get off the plane, again. However, 5 minutes later we were told that if we wanted to go to Paris, we could stay on the plane, or if we wanted to get off, we could do so now. This seemed like a weird thing to say, but as I found out later, it was because one of the fucking Spanish dickheads had called the cops from the plane and complained that were not being let off the plane. So there’s cops outside the plane doors demanding everyone be let off, we’re being told if we want to stay on we should take off in the next 35 minutes then we’ll go to Paris, otherwise we’ll have to get off then. What the Fuck? Well, 5minutes later the replacement crew shows up, and we’re told we’re going to Paris. Unfortunately the replacement crew fucks around for a good half an hour so when we finally take off it’s nearly 1am. We fucking finally take off and it is an uneventful 90 minute flight to Paris, and credit to Veuling, at least they fed us for free.

So I’m in Paris, at Charles de Gaulle airport. Julie is coming back to my hostel as she has well and truly missed her connecting train to Lille, and there are no metro trains running so we have to take a 40 euro taxi. We get to my hostel and the guy behind the desk doesn’t want Julie to come in and stay, even though I’m happy to share a bed, he expects her to sleep in the street. After much bullshit he agrees to let her stay till 7am, when the trains will be running again. I finally get up to my room by about 3:30am. About 12 hours after I should have been landing in Paris, had the plane been on time. Fucking Spain.

It’s actually really disappointing because I have had a great time in Spain, and part of me thinks I would really like to go back. But the bag stealing incident in Barcelona and the Madrid airport debacle has forever tainted my feelings toward Spain and I honestly don’t know if it can recover. Well, till next year anyway…

Valencia – It all about the Tomatoes

2009-08-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

My arrival in Valencia was less than spectacular as Ryan, Nic and I dragged ourselves from the Valencia airport to Nic’s hotel in Palameta. We were all completely shattered after three crazy nights in Ibiza and were just looking for somewhere dark and cool to chill for a bit. We spent a few hours coming down from our cloud in Nic’s room before Ryan headed off to find his own hotel and Nic and I went out to get some food. The whole area stunk of rotten food. I originally thought it was the dumpster bins that were near the entrance to the hotel, but we walked around the whole block to get to the supermarket, and the whole area smelled rank. Not a good start from Valencia, but Nic and I were in a bit of a daze anyway and all we wanted to do was have a bite to eat and get some kip.

A few hours later, Nic’s roommate rocked up and then went out again. And later Nic’s friend, Trish, who had organized Nic to go on the Fanatics La Tomatina tour, arrived from San Sebastian. They were pleased to see each other for the first time in ages, and Nic then made some plans to go out for drinks that night. I didn’t pay a lot of attention I was still wrecked. We got some more sleep and then at about 8pm, we headed out into the city of Valencia to get some food and have a few drinks. We were all too tired to make a deciscion, so we ate at Burger King, before finding the Irish pub, Finnegans, where most of the Fanatics were supposed to be. I didn’t even have a beer, but I did watch in great disappointment as Liverpoool got comprehensively pumped by Aston Villa. We all then left the pub and went back to Nic’s hotel, where I was crashing because I had no accommodation that night.

Tuesday morning I woke up feeling slightly better, although still a little scattered and packed up my stuff and left Nic’s hotel to go check into my own. Hotel Venecia was right in the centre of town, and I expected big things from it as my La Tomatina package with Busabout was way more expensive than Nic’s fanatics package, and her package included an extra nights accommodation. The hotel wasn’t bad, and after check in, I went out and grabbed some Paella from down the road, before coming back and falling promptly to sleep.

A few hours later I woke up with a great pain in my stomach. The stupid Paella had given me food poisoning. I guess that serves me right for going to the cheapest corner store I could find. After a bit of time in the WC, I felt a bit better and went back to sleep for a few more hours before going out with Ryan and his friends Mary and Bron for some sangria and some food and a random little Italian place that was decorated with a lot of fake antique furniture and gold paint.
About halfway through dinner I received a call from Paula. She had hitch hiked from Barcelona to Valencia and was wondering what I was up to. She made it very clear that she didn’t spend ten hours hitch hiking to solely to see me, but I chose to ignore those comments, choosing instead to believe that I have that kind of power over women. So awesome that I make them risk their life and use up their whole day to see me. Surely that’s believable? I finished dinner and then met Paula back at my hotel, where neither of us got much sleep, due to my roommate being quite a loud snorer and the street being very noisy below.

The next morning was the last Wednesday in August, and hence, the day of The Red War. La Tomatina is the world’s biggest food fight and apparently dates back to 1945 when children started throwing tomatoes during a festival. I was up and out of bed by 6:40am for the rather shitty breakfast that was put on by the hotel. I needed a bit more than stale bread and some cheeses and meats to get me going, but as is the way as through European hostels, that’s all you are getting. At about 8am I said goodbye to Paula and went downstairs to get my free Busabout La Tomatina T-shirt and headed onto the bus and off to Bunol, about 40kms away from Valencia. The bus trip itself took close to 45min making it about 9:30am at arrival. The actual tomato throwing doesn’t start till 11am, so we had plenty of time to walk through the crowd, buying some sangria along the way for me and Matt. We drank about half of it while it was still in its delicious sangria form, before emptying half of Matt’s bottle of vodka into each cup. It now tasted like wine coloured metho, and was no fun to drink at all. As we walked down the hill and through the town, we ran into Kate, Erin and their crew, and also a few other people we knew, all making their way into the centre of the small industrial town in preparation of the mayhem. By the time we got into the middle of town, the crush was on big time. All you could do was push through and keep going, just like the bigger moshpits of Big Day Out or any other large concert. We got to an area where we were reasonable happy, and waited, getting pushed, crushed, shoved, but all in all, having a great time yelling out for to the Bunol residents for water to be tipped on us from their balconies by screaming “AGUA!” to them. At around 11am (I don’t know for sure, I didn’t wear a watch) the first cannon went off and the crowd roared. The pushing hyped up into overdrive as the crowd prepare for the oncoming barrage of tomatoes, however the barrage didn’t come. Instead we just got pushed further and further down a side street and as much as we tried to get back into the action, there was no way back. We could see tomatoes being thrown on the main street and screamed for some to be thrown down to us. I caught one in my left hand and fired it back, but that was it. For that first fifteen minutes I thought that would be the extent of my La Tomatina tomato experience. We decided to drop further back, walk along a side street and make our way up to the main street a little closer to where the trucks come from. This plan worked brilliantly as we were soon back on the main street, right in the thick of it as the truck came down and dumped off their tomatoey missiles. There was more tomatoes than I could throw as I concentrated on getting the reasonably complete ones that I could fire off with a little more accuracy at people in the distance, when they ran out of would pick up handfuls of mush in my hands and dump it into the faces, pants and tops of those around me. After probably 30 minutes of red mayhem, the second cannon fired and the war was over. We all celebrated with another roar and looked around at our handiwork. The tomato mush ran ankle deep in the streets, covered the walls of nearby building and caked on centimeter thick onto the hair, skin and clothes of those nearby. We began the long walk back up the hill, stopping at the houses of locals who were out the front with their houses to rinse us off. Most of these hoses were operated by men, and as such, they would generally show more affection (and water) to the ladies who were prepared to show them a little cleavage. Hence, for most of the way up the hill I was still pretty messy until we finally got somewhere which wasn’t all that busy and could get a decent rinse. We got back to the bus and I changed into my other clothes, and then promptly fell asleep on the bus, waking up outside my hotel in Valencia.

I then had a short nap in my hotel before going out to find Paula, who had wandered off around Valencia without a map and was now unable to find her way back. She then committed the cardinal sin of being lost, which was giving me her location and then moving, but after a bit of pissing around, we eventually found each other, and then decided to go to the beach. The Valencia beach is heaps nicer than Barcelona. Actually, while we’re on it, Valencia as a city is much nicer than Barcelona. It may not quite have the nightlife, soul or vibrancy of Barcelona, but it’s much cleaner, prettier and safer. The Valencia beach is a wide strip of powder sand (yes, sand) between a tree lined boardwalk and the warm ocean, which even has a few small, rolling waves to play on. Paula and I stayed at the beach until sundown and then made our way back to my hotel to get changed and go out for a few drinks with some of the crew. We met Ryan out, but Nic had decided to go home and get some sleep. We all walked through the wide pretty street and plazas of Valencia until we found Kate and her crew. After a bit of faffing about we decided on a bar and stopped in there for a few drinks. We shared all our crazy stories of the wonderful ball of silliness that is La Tomatina, before realizing how late it was and deciding to say my goodbyes to Kate, as I would not see her until London in late October, and Ryan who I wouldn’t see until our planned Krakow trip in mid October.

Paula and I got back to the hotel and tidied up our stuff. I was off on the bus to Madrid then next morning, and she would be on a train back to Barcelona at 6:30am, the beginning of a long day of travel which will eventually have her back in Hamburg by 10pm that evening. I was once again sad to see her go, but we had planned for me to come see her in October in Berlin, so that once another trip to look forward to in what is rapidly becoming a very booked out September and October.

Ibiza – Why does my brain, body and wallet hurt so much?

2009-08-24T15:03:00.000-07:00

Nic, Ryan, Woo and I strolled off the plane and into the morning Mediterranean sun as we crossed the tarmac of Ibiza airport. It was hot and dry and still only just after 9am as we got a taxi to take us to the Lux Mar Apartments in Figueretas. Luckily nobody was to be checked out of our room, so we were able to check in immediately and head up to our room. We spent the day lazing about the pool, catching up on sleep and generally preparing ourselves for what would be a massive weekend of partying and Spanish flavoured craziness.

By mid evening on Friday, we had purchased our tickets for the infamous Pacha nightclub, got some food and booze for the evening, but had still not been able to locate any motivation for the evening’s festivities, however after a bucket load of red bull and vodka, we were on our way into the Ibiza night with a lot of expectations. We arrived at Pacha, and while it was still pretty empty, the club itself was very impressive. Rooms led onto arena which split into outdoor areas and secluded caves with more bars and rooms sprouting off them. Before we knew it, the club had filled up in what seemed like a matter of minutes and people filled every area. As the night wore on our inability to find motivation frustrated Woo, Ryan and myself as with a red bull and Vodka costing 30euro, we didn’t have alcohol to fall back on. Nic however found a group of British lads who were happy to ply her full of whatever motivation she was after. She had “possibly the best night of [her] life”, whereas Ryan, Woo and I all enjoyed our night, but were home and asleep a good few hours before Nic.

The next day consisted of sleep, lying on the beach and sleep. I was lucky enough to randomly bump in Erin, as I had lost Kate’s (Erin’s sister) mobile number when my phone was stolen and had planned to meet up with them in Ibiza for some party times. Down the beach Woo was able to locate something he had been looking for and we returned to the hotel, ready for a night out at Bora Bora and keen to take on Ibiza in round two. Somewhere around this time, I apparently lost my mind. I remember so little of this evening that hearing the stories of me chucking a tanty, taking photos of scantily clad Italian girls and general poor behavior are nearly as embarrassing as seeing the photographic evidence of me dancing around like a douche bag with my shirt off inside the club. Awful, disgraceful scenes. Although, until I heard all this the next day, I thought I had a pretty fantastic night and was once again back on the program and looking forward to the third and final round.

The next day consisted of sleep, lying by the pool, and more sleep. We dragged our asses out of our hotel by 10pm and went out to a bar where we got some reasonably priced drinks and Woo was once again able to sniff out some motivation for the group. We rocked up at Space nightclub by just after 11pm, met up with Kate, Erin and their crew and got the night cranking with a set of funky tech with a live drummer belting out some rocking beats. We then moved into the main room and the night cranked up another gear and we rocked into the night, occasionally going up to the terrace to hear the planes fly low over our heads as they came in to land at the Ibiza airport.

By about 6am, it was time for us to leave. We needed to be on a plane to Valencia by 9am, and would have no time to sleep. We got back to the hotel, packed all our stuff and got in a taxi to the airport. I said my goodbyes to Woo at the airport as he is heading back to the UK, while I head to Valencia and La Tomatina. We trudged like sickly, sleep deprived zombies out across the same Ibiza tarmac as we had three days ago. We came. We saw. We kicked its ass. Kinda.

Barcelona – The Best and the Worst

2009-08-22T05:28:00.000-07:00

Driving into Barcelona we were told two things by our rather useless guide. A) Barcelona is awesome. B) At least two of us out of that busload would get mugged. While it was hard to ignore the obvious excitement of being in my first Spanish city, I found myself dwelling on the second point more as I walked down to the ATM to get some cash to pay for the hostel. Our hostel in Barcelona was in a pretty dingy area, not too far from La Ramblas, but also swarming with delinquent types and prostitutes, despite being over the road from the police station. While checking into the hostel all I remember is Elena, the gorgeous German hostel manager, who had a penchant for pulling faces when people pissed her off, even though she wasn’t aware she was doing it.

After getting settled in the consensus decision amongst the group was that we would do the pub crawl tonight, the first day in town. Remembering the same decision in Prague turned a little pear-shaped, I was hesitant at first, but being easily led, and this time making sure I had a decent map, we all headed out to the crawl. There is not a lot I remember about that night. I thought I remembered most of it, but later found out that a lot more had happened than what I thought. I remember stupidly trying to hit on Lauren all night, even though she had a boyfriend back in Perth. I remember meeting Kelly, a sweetheart Canadian at the club at the end of the night. Apart from that, it’s all a mess. But I had fun (I think) and didn’t get mugged on the way home, so all in all, it was a success. My friend Ryan, however, did get mugged. They cut the watch off his arm and ran off, cutting his arm in the process. Bastards.

The next morning I woke up and went for a walk around town with two American girls in my room named Megan and Surly. Yes. Her name is Surly. I was as surprised as anyone. It felt weird to be calling someone else Surly. Very weird. So, anyway, we walked around town all day to look at the various examples of Gaudi architecture. I must admit I know nothing of Gaudi before getting to Barcelona, but it truly is awesome stuff and completely different to anything I had seen before. When I returned back to the hostel, I found that the Woo Tang Man had hit town and was looking for me. That night, Woo and I went out on the town with Kate, Erin and some lads from their room. We went out for traditional tapas and then cocktails before hitting up more bars and ending up at Boulevard nightclub at around 3am. It was good to see Woo again, and he was back to the old Woo, striking up conversation with anyone and generally having a great time being silly with everyone. We rolled into our hostel at about 4am and crashed hard.

The next day Woo and I rolled out of bed quite late and decided to go to the beach with Surly for the afternoon. We walked the 20min walk in the blazing sun and were very glad to get to the beach finally and see that it was sand (well, dirt really) and the water was cool and blue. We were on the lookout for bag snatchers as apparently you couldn’t leave any you stuff on its own or it would get promptly stolen. I started talking to a stunning German girl named Paula. We compared tattoos and generally paid out on each other’s stupidity. After a few hours on the beach it was time to leave and we made the long walk home, stopping along the way for a Gelato, and got back to hostel feeling tired, hungry and slightly burnt. Woo and I then head out to a local British pub to watch the opening Liverpool game of the season, and despite being very disappointed with Liverpool’s loss, we met some top class Irish lads who were a great laugh and demanded that Woo and I go over to meet them for some big nights in Dublin at sometime.

We had to rush out on the Irish lads, Steve and Phil, as we needed to get ready to go out to dinner with a bunch of people. Surly and Megan had offered to take us out to a “Neo-tapas” restaurant. Megan liked to dub this sort of food “bread sushi” because everything came out on a piece of French bread, in the same way that some sushi is a bed of rice, with a piece of fish on top. Woo had invited Carolyn, and German girl from his room along for the meal and I had invited Paula, although as she didn’t have a phone I was going to be waiting on a call from her to give her directions on how to meet us. However, by far the most illustrious guest was Nic, who had arrived on the bus that night, and I hadn’t seen since Salzburg a few weeks earlier, and was super excited to be seeing again.

The “bread sushi’ was pretty amazing, apart from the occasional let down, and we ate our fill of it and drank lots of sangria before the waiter came around to count our toothpicks to tell us how much we owed, as there was a toothpick in each portion of food. I finally got a call from Paula, only an hour and fifteen minutes late, and managed to give her sufficient directions to make it to the Orio restaurant. She arrived about fifteen minutes later and had a glass of sangria with us before Surly, Megan and Carolyn decided to head back to the hostel. Nic, Woo, Paula and I all decided to head out from some cocktails at the bar we had been to the night before, as we could still make it for most of happy hour. A few cocktails later and happy hour was over so we cruised around the inner city of Barcelona, having a drink or two in a few random bars before by about 3am Nic and Woo and decided it was time to return to the hostel. Paula and I decided to go down to the beach, so I grabbed my bag and we started the walk.

About ten minutes into the half hour walk, I realized that in addition to having my towel in it, my bag also contained my camera and ipod. Being as the only reason I had grabbed my bag is that I knew it had my towel in it, I was a little annoyed at myself, but I wasn’t prepared to walk all the way back to drop it off, and wasn’t planning on letting the bag out of my sight, so decided it would be fine. Paula and I arrived at the beach and put down our bags on a spot far away from anyone. We occasionally had someone walk past us, but were both very surprised to notice 30minutes later that our bags, which were sitting right behind us, were gone. I sat there in disbelief for a good ten minutes. I could not believe the incredulousness of what had just happened, however after having a conniption at the realization that I had lost my phone more than anything else, it was time put Paula on a train back to her place, and make the long walk home, going to sleep as the sun was rising.

The next morning was all about doing a police report, which took me over an hour and a half, and then heading out for some food with Ryan and Woo. I did have dreams of going to get some stuff, such as a new phone, backpack and possibly camera, but in the end I just didn’t have the energy so I ended up just sitting around the hostel for most of the day before we had all planned to go out for tapas and sangria, before going to a massive club night at Apollo. Nic’s hostel was supposed to take a big group of us to an all you can eat paella place, with cheap sangria, but that never eventuated, so we all headed out into the town to find one ourselves. As always when you have a group of lots of people and no leader, we ended up walking around aimlessly looking at menu’s with nobody making a decision for about half an hour before we finally decided on a restaurant not too far from where we were originally congregated. The paella and sangria were good, and not too expensive, and afterwards we headed out to a shot bar down one of the back streets. This bar was really cool, with thousands of different shots available, all for 2 euros each. Some involved setting the bar on fire, roasting some marshmallows on the fire, then doing the shot. Very cool stuff that would be unlikely to ever be allowed in Australia due to OHS and fire code restrictions. The problem for me however, is that I was absolutely rat-shit tired and I knew I wasn’t going to last much longer, regardless of how many shot I might have. I said my goodbyes, left the crew out and headed back to the hostel to be in my bed and out like a lamp by midnight.

The next morning Woo, Ryan and I went into the shopping district as I needed to get a new phone and a new backpack. We walked around for ages, with very little success. In the electronics store I noticed that many cameras were being bought by tourists, and I wondered how much Barcelona’s economy relies on theft. If everyone stopped getting their camera or ipod etc stolen in Barcelona, then they would have no need to buy a new one here, and I think Barcelona would see a 10-15% drop in sales of consumer electronic goods. They’re all in cahoots I say! Oh well, it’s only a theory. After finally finding a Vodafone, we were told that we needed our passports to get a phone. I didn’t have my phone so we made the long annoying walk back to the hostel to get them. Ryan, who also needed a sim card, and I, left Woo at the hostel and went back out to Vodafone on our own. I also found a new backpack along the way, and although being nowhere near as good as my previous one, it would do the job. I got my sim and finally got everything working in English and was very glad to have a phone again, even though my new phone is shit, and Spanish call plans are in no way cheap.

That afternoon I ran into Matt and Sarah, whom I had not seen since my first stop in Vienna and let them know we had decided to stay in the hostel that evening and drink some store purchased sangria. We went through about six bottles of sangria before heading out, again going to the cocktail bar, as it was all night happy hour tonight. Matt, Sarah, Ryan, Nic, Woo and I all got thoroughly destroyed on 3.50euro cocktails before at 2am deciding hitting up Boulevard would be a good idea. After 3 hours of completely spastic dancing, but no more drinks due to their ridiculous prices, we took the short walk through the shitbomb area back to the hostel.

We woke up Wednesday morning with our priority being to get tickets to the Barcelona FC game at the Nou Camp versus Manchester City. Tickets were 30euro, not terribly good seats, and we had to split up into two groups of two, but we were all very excited to be going to one of the most famous stadiums in the world and seeing the reigning champions of Europe play the richest club in the world. After getting our tickets, everybody had different plans, with Woo going out sightseeing with some of his Contiki friends, while Ryan and Nic wanted to have a nap. I planned on doing some washing but got a call from Paula, and instead hung out with her for the afternoon. There was nobody else in my hostel room, so it was nice to be able to spend some time one on one with her, without the fear of having my stuff stolen. That evening we all congregated on the hostel roof for a few hours of sangria, laughter and conversation before heading out to the Soccer game, saying my goodbyes to Paula, who is not a sport person, before we left.

The Nou camp isn’t an overly impressive stadium from the outside, but once you enter it, you realize that the ground level inside the ground is significantly lower than outside, and the hundred thousand seat stadium in a cauldron of noise, lights and Catalan pride when inside. The spectacle of it all was fantastic, and although Woo and I were nearly directly behind the goals on the opposite end of the pitch to the only goal that was scored, it was still an amazing experience to be there. The problems however started arising after the game when Nic and Ryan, who had been seated in another section of the stadium, had walked off in a different direction and had no map. Eventually we had to go find them, and by the time we returned, the metro railway system had stopped running. The game did not finish until 12:30am, with a full house of nearly one hundred thousand people, and yet there were no trains less than an hour later. Nice one Barcelona. We ended up walking nearly half the way home (about 5kms) before we finally got a taxi at around 3am and got back to the hostel to pass out after a night that ended up being a lot later than we had planned.

Thursday would be my last day in Barcelona, and like every single other day before it, I did not get up in time to take advantage of the free breakfast. I spent my morning organizing my bag and getting my washing done before meeting Paula and spending the day with her. We went to possibly the most expensive ‘model food’ restaurant I have ever been to, with meals costing 18euro and being the size of a small entrée. The next morning I said my sad goodbyes to Paula and met Nic, Ryan and a still very, very drunk Woo for the early morning taxi to the airport, and our flight to Ibiza. Woo had done to pubcrawl the night before, and got massively fucked up, missing his alarm, packing his bag that morning, waking up everyone in his room, making the taxi wait for us, and was generally loud, drunk and fucking hilarious, especially when he asked an attractive airport worker if she would like to accompany him to Ibiza. Classic Woo.

Barcelona included the absolute best and worst times of my holiday. The nightlife was outstanding. Every night there was an absolute blast. The city is gorgeous, with some of the more stunning and different architecture in Europe and your doorstep. However, the crime and consistent fear of crime is always there and dilutes any enjoyment you might be able to have in your time there, destroying your growing love of the amazing Catalan capital.

Nice – A nice place to go.

2009-08-14T10:47:00.000-07:00

I rolled into Nice and 30’ heat after a long day on the bus which included a stop in Lake Como on the way from Lauterbrunnen. My first impressions of Nice were not great, as I had decided not to stay at the drop off point, instead going to The Villa Saint Exupery, a hostel which has been voted in the top 5 hostels in the world every year for the last 5 years. This hostel is a little out of the city and hence I had to catch a tram out to the burbs and then get picked up by the Hostel shuttle. While on the tram on the way out, the driver announced something in French, everyone groaned, and then half the passengers got off the bus. I had no idea what was going on, as I don’t speak French, and therefore just stood dumbly in the tram for half an hour before it started moving again. I finally got to my hostel, checked in and then had to come straight back into town for a dinner which I would not have bothered going to, had I not already paid for it on the bus.

The next morning I headed into Nice to go to the beach and walk along the boardwalk. It was hot and sunny, so I can definitely see why it is such a huge holiday destination; however their beaches pale in comparison to Australia’s. As far as I’m concerned it you don’t have sand, and you don’t have waves, then it’s not a beach. It’s a big, uncomfortable pool! I walked down the boardwalk, talking in the sights, the beautiful women and more than a few leathery old men. Later that afternoon I met up with Hannah, and some of her friends that she had made on the Southern Loop through Italy, and we all made our way down to the beach at Cap d’Ail.

Cap d’Ail is just before Monaco, and is a very small, secluded beach. It’s still pretty touristy, but nowhere near as much as nice or Monaco. It is also nearly a sand beach, as in the pebbles are quite small. We stayed there for a bit, with the girls choosing not to go for a swim due to a few clouds in the sky and them being typical women who go to the beach with no intention of getting in the water. After a few hours at Cap d’Ail we caught the train back to Nice, having plans to go out that night, however after a day in the sun, sand and sea, I decided that I’d just have a few drinks at the hostel.

Tuesday morning was the big trip to St Tropez; hangout, harbor, and hometown of the famous and obscenely wealthy. I started the day with a quick trip to the Museum of Modern Art, where I was blown away by some of the pieces, whereas others confirmed my hatred of any art that is more about what it is supposed to represent rather than any artistic ability of skill in its creation. The St Tropez trip started with a 2 hour bus ride and then a few hours free time in Port Grimaud. Port Grimaud is basically a gated community where there are more boats than cars and has been created to look old and historic. It’s not old and historic. It’s fake and soulless, and the best part of my time there was falling asleep on the beach.

After an hour and a half at Port Grimaud, we boarded the bus again and went to the harbor, where we got on a boat for our 90 minute cruise to St Tropez going by celebrities mansions and hearing stories of their escapades. At St Tropez, Jarrad, Erin, Kate and I went for some incredibly expensive pizza, and then made our way around the old town area of St Tropez, making our own fun with photos and jumping into the ocean. When we got back to the boat we found out that we had missed out on spotting celebrities Sting, Shakira and Karl Lagerfeld. None of which I care deeply about, although Sting is cool.

Wednesday was a few hours old before I finally made my way out to Monaco to have a look around and lay on the beach. The beach itself was nearly sand, but absolutely packed and the water did not seem terribly clean. I took a few pics near the F1 track and walked around the Monte-Carlo casino. The amount of money in that place is absolutely mind boggling. I’ve seen Ferrari’s, Aston-Martins and Lamborghini’s before, but in Monaco you see these supercars with the regularity that you see Toyota Camrys in Perth. After an hour’s walking around in the glaring heat, I spent the next few hours lying on the beach, swimming and reading my book before bussing back to Nice and meeting up with Erin and Kate for dinner. After dinner we all headed into Nice, taking some photos, getting lost in old town and watching the B-Boy crews perform their break-dance routines for the many people out on the street that night. Nice is a very lively place out on the street at night, but there isn’t much in the way of nightlife, hence we were back at the hostel and the night was over by 2am.

Friday was my last day in Nice, so I walked up to the top of the hill overlooking Nice to take some photos. It was quite an amazing view over the old town, beaches and out to the Mediterranean. I then met up with Erin and Kate at the beach for a few hours before some massive (1foot) waves signaled it was time to go back to the hostel and get ready for the big night in Cannes.

We got to Cannes, tickets in hand for the outdoor festival gig that was being headlined by Sinden, a DJ I had seen open the Villa nightclub in Perth not 3 months earlier. After finding the festival grounds, Kate, Erin and I then searched around for a supermarket and purchased a bottle of vodka and some lemonade. We polished the bottle off in a park just outside the gig, then went inside and tore it up with Frenchy and tourist alike, having a fantastic, silly time. The last time I saw Sinden, I was with Sara at the opening of Villa nightclub, and more than once I wished she was with me in Cannes also. Next year I guess.

The last train back to Nice left at midnight so we had to leave the gig an hour before it finished in order to get home. We travelled back in first class, rightly assuming that nobody would be checking our tickets on a midnight train, and reach Nice at about 12:30am. I got myself a Royale with cheese at McDonalds, before going back to my hotel and into the sauna that was my room, getting maybe 2 hours of sleep before I got up at 6:30am for the bus to Barcelona, where I would meet up with many of my friends I had met over the last 2 months as we all congregate once again for the craziness that will be La Tomatina.

Lauterbrunnen – Amidst the Alps and the Falls

2009-08-09T13:57:00.000-07:00

Lauterbrunnen is a cosy little hollow a few miles further up the mountain from Interlaken in the middle of the holiday area of Switzerland’s Alps. The name Lauterbrunnen means “place of many waterfalls” or something like that, and it has become popular in summer as a great place for adventure sports such as skydiving, white water rafting, canyoning and even some base jumping. I arrived at about 8pm after a short journey from Bern. I wasn’t staying at Camping Jungfrau so I had to get to my Hostel, which luckily was only a few hundred meters on the other side on the river. After checking in, Steve and Jenna (a couple from Southampton, that were also in Bern) and Myself went over to the bar for a meal and a few drinks. I had a Swiss Rosti, which is basically grated potato, fried like a pancake, then cooked with an egg, cheese and bacon on top. It was awesome.

Jenna, Steve and I kicked on at “The Bomb Shelter”, a Contiki and Busabout only bar at Chalet Jungfrau. Unfortunately it was full of 18yr old GAP year kids who wear having some sort of costume party, as a part of a Contiki theme night. As it was neither Jenna, Steve nor My idea of a fun environment, we headed over to the bar at Shutzenbach, where we were staying. It was a good night at the Shutzenbach bar, we drank far too much and laughed a lot at all the girls trying to dance hot, when they were just plain not. No amount of bum shaking and hair flicking makes up for bad bone structure, years of poor diet and no exercise. In the end I stumbled up the stairs to bed at about midnight, with Steve and Jenna not too far behind.

The next morning I got up and had a bit of breakfast with Josh and Kylie (another couple I met in Bern). We then headed out to Trummelbach Falls. The largest falls in the area where in peak flow twenty thousand litres per second flows through the massive gorges the water has carven in the rock over millions of years. Trummelbach was very impressive and the day was clear as lovely as we walked back towards town. We decided to go up to a smaller waterfall near the Camping Jungfrau campgrounds, which was very pretty, but I was disappointed that I couldn’t stand underneath the waterfall. Josh and Kylie went into town, whereas I decided I was going to stand under that waterfall, trespassing, falling rocks and otherwise were not going to stand in my way. I think I was still annoyed at myself for not jumping off the bridge in Bern into the Aare river, as Josh did. But in my defense, my stuff was all packed and he jumped about two minutes before out bus arrived. Nevertheless, I wanted a special solo memory of my own.

The waterfall was inaccessible from the tourist path; however you could walk directly up to it from the road, over a large grassed area which was someone’s back lawn. They had obviously experienced this a few times and were sick of it, as there were large “Private Property – No Trespassing” signs adorning the fence to the paddock behind the house. Next to the property was a dry creek bed which led up to the waterfall, covered by trees and shrubs. This was the secondary creek leading down the hill from the waterfall and would only have water in it when the waterfall was flowing particularly heavily. I decided this was my avenue of attack and made my way up the creek bed, shirtless wearing my Diesels, which have pretty much lost all their grip as they’ve been the only shoes I’ve brought on the trip. I slipped a few times on rocks, but with my cat-like reflexes I was able to avoid any major spills. I started to feel a little like Rambo as I pressed up the creek toward the waterfall, as there were helicopters bussing around above me, running paragliding and skydiving trips. I was hidden under the cover of the treetops so I crawled through the jungle with the bags and sticks being my only problem. When I got close to the top, the creek began to fill with water, as it got some of the flow from the waterfall, luckily there were still rocks big enough to avoid having to walk in the water and I finally made it to the top with a great sense of pride. Now I had to figure what to do with my camera and mobile phone as there was nowhere particularly dry for me to set them down. I took a few photos in the waterfall and then decided to head back, before I completely destroyed my brand new camera. It turns out that the trip down was significantly harder that the way up, with me nearly slipping on my ass more than once, but I eventually made it back. Scratched, muddy, wet, but with a great deal of pride that I had decided to do something, and then done it, even if it was something as simple as walking up a hill and standing under a waterfall.

That afternoon Josh, Kylie and I had booked to go White Water rafting. We were picked up at around 4pm by Outdoor Interlaken and taken to their base where we got into all the gear and then headed out to the Black Lutshine River. We got some safety instructions and some rafting instructions and then we were straight into the rapids. It was FUREAKIN COLD in that river, despite the wetsuit, as we were only a few kilometers down mountain from the Glacial melt. Josh and I were at the front of the boat, and hence copped most of the spray, but it was absolutely sensational fun and I would recommend it to anyone.

That night Steve, Jenna and I again went out for a meal, and again I got a Rosti. Damn, I love those things. We had an easy night though, as I was getting up at 6am to go on the train up to Jungfraujoch the next morning.

I woke up at 6am and met Josh and Kylie before walking into town to catch the 6:59am train from Lauterbrunnen up to Jungfraujoch, the highest train station in Europe with restaurants, viewing platforms and snow. Sounds great, and it should be for about 100euro, but unfortunately, it was a really cloudy day and all you could see was white. We still had a good time sliding down a hill on the snow disks (basically the same as toboggans) and playing with the Huskies. The only problem was that my Diesels aren’t built for snow at the best of times, and certainly not when they are still pretty wet from the previous day’s adventure to the waterfall. My feet got cold, then they went numb, then they actually started to hurt quite a lot. Still we had a great day, and after the journey back we were all pretty tired.

That night I went out for a meal in town with some girls from Perth that I had met up at Jungfrau. Lauren, Laura and Mel are all from Perth, and are just doing the west loop after having just done a tour in Egypt. Hearing their stories of Egypt has made me even more determined to go there next year. We all shared some cheese fondue, and I had yet another Rosti. That’s four in 3 days. I’m such a tubby bitch these days. It’s embarrassing. I don’t think I’ll ever have another Rosti, but it was nice while it lasted. Josh and Kylie came down to the restaurant and joined us for a beer before we all headed back to the campsite to get some rest before getting on our respective busses the next morning.

Lauterbrunnen has been a fantastic few days, filled with adventure and beauty. I’ve once again proven to myself that wherever I go, there are other great people out there travelling, and I will always find new friends – even if I seem to lose them as soon as the next bus departs. The place has unparalleled natural beauty. As we drove out past the lakes on Interlaken, you can see the lake, with small villages along the shoreline, then majestic mountains stretching up higher than the low layers of cloud. It is truly gorgeous, and I can only hope that the mountains of Kitzbuhel, where I’ll be all winter, are half as pretty.

Bern – Pretty. Expensive. Pretty. Boring.

2009-08-06T07:59:00.001-07:00

Now I will preface this blog entry by saying that I am well aware that I definitely could have gotten more out of Bern.

I arrived in Bern following a pleasant 6 hour train ride from Munich that had followed an evening where I had experienced the sound of worlds colliding in the form of some American dude snoring on the bunk above me. I got very little sleep, but snoozed on the train. Upon arriving in Bern I walked to the hostel, and saw that Bern is – like all European towns- a very pretty place. However it is full of little expensive shops and middle aged people shopping for useless trinkets and overpriced clothing.

After arriving at the hostel and dropping off my bags I went back out to get some food, and after walking nearly all the way back to the train station for the nearest supermarket was greeted with horrible service and a whole lot of attitude. I then came back to the hostel and used the internet, always intending to go out at night, but got caught up with a few things and never went out again.

The next morning I woke up and really needed to do some washing. There were no facilities at this hostel, so I needed to walk to one about 2 kms away. It was a pleasant walk along the river, the sun shining but not terribly hot. I paid over ten euro to get a medium sized load of washing done, and most of my socks were still damp. I then dropped my washing back at the hostel and again went out for food. I was really craving asian food at the moment and chose a noodle and sushi place. I ended up paying close to $AUD30 for what was effectively a chicken curry rice from Hans café. I then came back to the hostel and continued reading my book while I waited for my socks to dry.

Okay. So that’s what I did in Bern. Now, what I would have done, had I known about it earlier is float around the river. It’s a beautiful clean river and the locals seem to be floating around all the time. As I didn’t have a full day here, that was never really a possibility, but it would be fun and cheap. If I was loaded it would probably be quite fun to go out in Bern, as there are plenty of bars and restaurants, but being as I know I’ll drop a few hundred euro rafting and bungy jumping in Lauterbrunnen, I’m trying to keep a check on the spending.

Munich – Lots of Beer, Lots of Tourists

2009-08-05T10:56:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Munich at about 4pm and immediately jumped on the hostels free WiFi to upload Salzburg blog and photos. This is not because there was any great need to upload them immediately, but because the line for check-in was out the door, and I don’t do lines at the best of times, let alone when I’m tired and hungry.

After grabbing a slice of pizza to hold me over, and then checking in after the line had depleted, Nic and I went for a walk through Munich. I needed some credit for my mobile, and a new camera after my 7 year old Canon decided to play silly buggers for most of the time in Salzburg. Nic needed to get a train from Munich to St Johann organized for the next morning so we went to Haupbahnhof train station first t organize that. Once the ticket was sorted, we headed into the main shopping area to find a Vodafone and a camera shop.

What immediately struck me about Munich was the old style ‘German-ness’ of its architecture. Well, that and the shitloads of tourists, locals and crazies out of the street. I put this down to it being a warm Saturday afternoon, and being as Munich has no Sunday trading, Saturday would obviously be the busiest day of the week. I got myself some credit and a new Canon camera, much the same as my old one but smaller, lighter and better quality.

After wandering through the city, Nic and I decided to go and check out the Augustiner brau-struben, which is the Augustiner beer hall that is not advertised, and mainly set up for locals. Due to this the steins are about 20% cheaper and the food nearly half price. Nic and I both had the mixed pan which consisted of a pork knuckle, pork steak, quarter duck and a big dumpling. It was freakin awesome. A meat fest indeed, and the beer was good too!

After enjoying our meal, we went back to the hostel, got cleaned up and met some people in the bar. We had all decided to go to Kultfabric, which depending on whether you believe lonely planet, or the staff at the hostel, either was, or was not an old potato factory. Either way, it is now a massive complex of clubs and bars, just a few hundred metres away from Ostbahnhof train station. In the end there was a group of nearly twenty people coming out, and somehow I had become the person with the information, so I was the person people were asking all the questions of. This effectively meant that I was running a pub crawl and not getting paid for it. I was reasonably confident what I was doing, but it still seemed a bit retarded that I was being asked directions by people who had been in Munich for a couple of days, when I had been there for a couple of hours. In the end we all got there with a little trouble and I was happy to have not been responsible for getting the group lost.

Kultfabric looks pretty awesome, and the idea of 25 clubs in one location sounds pretty awesome. Unfortunately the reality was that every club played pretty much the same cheesy music, had exorbitant cover charges and drink prices and overall was filled with the same mostly tourist, mostly douchebag crowd. The two things that kept me occupied where the antics of a 50 year old bald dude, who danced like Peter Garret and smelled as if he had been dancing without a shower since the early eighties. My own cheesy dancing with Nic and others was also amusing and overall, despite the 8euro cost of drinks, I still had a good night. Five of us decided to leave at around 3am, and being as I hadn’t got to sleep till 4am the night before in Salzburg, I was definitely ready to go.

Sunday morning I awoke surprisingly refreshed, as I got up in time for breakfast and then waited in the lobby for the Munich city walking tour to start. It was very interesting to hear all about the history of Munich, both its Bavarian history and more recent history as the birthplace of the Nazi party. Ozzie, our tour guide was very knowledgeable on all things Munich, but gave out a few questionable answers regarding what happened in West Germany and Munich post WW2. However, overall it was an informative and very entertaining tour. After the tour, I met up with Carly and Ash after they had done the New Europe free tour and it finished in the same spot. We walked back to the hostel and checked a few things on the internet before deciding the weather was good enough and it might be worth checking out the nude park for a bit of a chuckle. I didn’t really care about the nudes, but wanted to see the surf wave, which is in the same park.

Almost immediately after leaving the hostel, the weather started to turn shit. At first it was just a small sprinkling of rain, so we pressed on. We arrived at the park and it was windy, cold and raining gently, hardly the weather for nude sunbathers, so we searched around for the surf wave. We found the surf wave after a short walk through the park, and I was quite surprised at both the size of it, and the amount of people waiting around in full surf gear to ride it. I’m sure all the surf shops in Munich are pleased that what was originally an unintended accident resulting from some work to the waterway, had resulted in so many Munichians taking up surfing.

That night I went back to Augustiner Brau-Struben again, this time with Ash, Carly and Chris. We all go the mixed pan, and it was again fantastic, although Carly preferred to call it ‘pretty good’, saving her food admiration for the new Chicken Nugget burger at Burger King, which she described as ‘sensational’. After a the stein and meal we went into Hoffbrauhaus, which is the most famous beer hall in the world, and also a massive tourist hotspot with high priced steins and Bavarian behavior almost a caricature of itself. However, as much as it is expensive, and full of tourists, it is still a must see while in Munich, not just for the German band, German outfits and pretzel girls, but also for the fact that Adolf Hitler’s failed “Beer Hall Putsch” of 1923 occurred in the same building. Woo was at Hoffbrauhaus with his Contiki group, which he happily ditched to hang out with Chris, Ash, Carly and Myself. Woo spent the time catching me and the group up on how much he hated his Contiki and how much he loved New York City. At the end of the night, Woo returned to his very drunk Contiki crew and we headed back to the hostel.

On Monday morning I slept in far too long and missed breakfast. I decided a pretty quiet day was in order, so I spent the first few hours getting my accommodation sorted for the remaining stops I hadn’t booked. I’m going to be burning massive amounts of cash over the next two months, so I’m gonna have to figure out some self control. In the afternoon I went out to look through some of the massive cathedrals in Munich as they were being used the day before when we did the tour, and hence couldn’t look inside. It’s weird being inside a Catholic church. They are so ornate and over the top, and seem to celebrate the death of Christ so much more than his life. Oh well. I don’t understand organized religion anyway, so why should Catholicism be any different? I went up the tower of St Peter’s Chapel, and got a lovely view out over the city of Munich, although by far the most amusing moment was when I passed a woman who was taking her dog up to the top, as I was coming down.

That night I went out for what Chris had described as the ‘best kebab of his life’ the day before, with Chris, Ash and Carly. To Chris’s credit, it was a pretty good kebab. Even Carly had to give it a better than ‘pretty good’ rating. We then said goodbye to Ash and Carly as they were off to Venice the next morning on the bus. I would probably catch Ash again in London, as she’s planning on staying and attempting to get a job. Chris and I again headed to Hoffbrauhaus, as a group of Busabout people were supposed to be meeting us there, but they had gone to Augustiner and decided to stay there. We met up with a few other people we knew and had a stein with them before heading home.

Tuesday morning I got up a bit late and had to rush to be ready for the Dachau Concentration camp tour. The camp tour itself was very sobering, as can be expected when one is walking through gas chambers and past ovens. It was, however, a very different experience to Sachsenhausen, near Berlin. As I did not have a guided tour of Sachsenhausen and could sit on the grass and take everything in at my own pace. I found that this gave me more opportunity to feel the place, whereas with Dachau I was being given information overload by Gordon, our guide, so it was all I could do to try to take in all the info, and was given little opportunity to feel it. Neither was better than the other, and I’m sure when looking over my Dachau photo’s I will have more of an opportunity to mull it over in my head and gather my thoughts and feelings on the place.

After returning back from Dachau I met Charlie in Marienplatz, the main square of the city where the infamous Glockenspiel is housed. We went for (another) stein at Hoffbrauhaus, as I do believe every visitor to Munich has to do it at least once, and Charlie had not been there before. After that we got some food and walked around, catching the 5pm Glockenspiel show before walking back to the hostel. After Charlie did some stuff on the internet, getting very excited about her friend meeting her in Geneva for her next workshop, we went for a walk on the opposite side of the hostel. When we got to the park, we couldn’t figure out what all the construction was, until we realized that this park is where Oktoberfest is held and they were already setting up the tents for it. I say tents, but really the looked more like aircraft hangers, huge sheds displaying the local brewers logo and easily capable of seating thousands of people.

I dropped Charlie at Hauptbahnhof to catch her train and then went back to the hostel to get a decent night’s sleep before negotiating two train changes on my trip to Bern the next day. Unfortunately, one of the three American dudes in our room actually snores loud enough to be heard clearly through my ear plugs, so my night was uneasy and listless and left me kinda cranky the next morning. I had plenty of time throughout the night, awake due to the sound of worlds colliding in the bunk above me, to think about Munich. I had first stated to think about how I felt about Munich while speaking to Ozzie, the tour guide a few days earlier, as he was almost comically pro-Munich, Anti-Berlin, and this grated on me a little due to my love for Berlin. I mentioned that I felt Munich was the Sydney of Germany, whereas Berlin was the Melbourne. He said I was the first Aussie to say that, a point which I found hard to believe due to the amount of Melbournites that had agreed that Berlin reminded them of Melbourne. So, as I lay there trying to ignore the snoring, I ran through it in my head.

Melbourne and Sydney both contain much of the history of the European settlement of Australia, just as both Munich and Berlin are filled with a rich history of their people over the last 1000 years. I think the differences come from how the tourists see them, and the feel of each city. Ask a tourist what they think of when they think of Australia, and after kangaroos and koalas, Bondi beach, the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge are bound to come up, obviously these are all Sydney. Ask anyone what they think of Germany, and after WW2, most likely you will be told beer halls, and lederhosen. Both of these are not actually German traditions, but Bavarian traditions. Hence as you walk around Munich, it has a tendency to feel ‘more German’ than Berlin. Just as Melbourne doesn’t care that it has less of a touristy feel than Sydney, I doubt Berlin cares. Both Melbourne and Berlin exude a ‘do what you want, I don’t care’ attitude that is extremely freeing and pleasant in today’s society. It’s not as obvious as a giant bridge crossing the harbor, or the most famous beer hall in the world, but Melbourne and Berlin survive and succeed due to the way you feel when you live there.

I really miss Melbourne at the moment (can you tell?), and it’s made worse by the fact the Sarah and Nate will be moving there shortly. Hopefully some white water rafting in Lauterbrunnen and four days on the beach in Nice should make me feel a little better.

Salzburg – The Sound of Money

2009-08-01T06:52:00.000-07:00

Arriving in Salzburg in the pouring rain on Tuesday, it was immediately evident what a picturesque town this place is, so after uploading some photos to the internet, while waiting rain to ease, I was out walking around the town with my camera at the ready.

I walked through the old town taking in the many statues amongst the town squares and attempting to avoid the throngs of tourists. It seems Salzburg is where Germans and Austrians come for a week away, as most of the tourists were German speakers. The two most striking things about Salzburg are the fortress high up on the ridge, overlooking the town, and the stunning turquoise of the Salzac river. Walking back towards the hostel, I crossed a footbridge over the Salzac and was greeted with a stunning view along the river, to the town with the cathedrals sitting above and the Castle dominating from the top.

After accidentally falling asleep for a few hours I went down to the bar and met Clay, Michael, Matt and Dave who were planning on going out to the Monastery for a beer and maybe a meal. I joined them and we headed out into Salzburg, finding the Monastery after a little bit of walking around in circles and got ourselves a stein. You have to get your own stein off the shelf, then wash it, then wait in line to pay for it, and it is then filled directly out of the barrel. Pretty cool stuff, but I was disappointment with the fact that it seemed much more like a pub with a big beer garden than a monastery.

The next morning I woke up and decided to go out to the Eagles nest, which is a small chalet at the top of a mountain which was given too Hitler by the Nazi party as his 50th birthday present. The tour cost 50 euros, which is pretty nuts, but after my time in Berlin I have found myself very interested in all the history relating to Hitlers third reich. We were taken by bus to a tunnel about 80m below the eagles nest, where we boarded an elevator and were taken up to the Oval room. Nearly everything that Hitler ever used has since been destroyed, so it was a strange sensation to stand in a room knowing that 65 years earlier Hitler himself would have been there. Although he wasn’t there very often, as he suffered from Vertigo and this place is built right on the peak of the mountain with sheer drop offs on 3 sides. One a side note, I starting to think of Hitler as a bit of a fairy. He was a vegetarian, suffered from vertigo and was a failed artist. Seems like someone should’ve given him a cup of harden the fuck up when he was a child.

Unfortunately, the eagles nest has little historical significance remaining as they have turned it into a massively touristy area, with the chalet itself now set up as a restaurant. If this was all I got for my 50 euros I would have been very disappointed. However, the best thing about the tour was the hour we got to walk around on the mountain, and as it was a clear day you could see for over 100 miles. Clay, Michael and I all walked around the mountain for a while, taking some great photo’s and generally being amazed at the scenery.

That afternoon, after making the decision to stay in Salzburg for another two day, I now had time on my hands so decided to take it easy by reading a book in the park. Something that I hadn’t had a chance to do for a few months, so spending a few hours reading was a great relaxing way to spend my afternoon before the night ahead. That night we all went out for a few beers at a bar called Flip. Clay and I then kicked on at some other bars before stumbling home, attempting to eat a pretty average Kebab on the way. As you may be able to tell, I don’t actually remember a lot of what happened that evening.

Thursday morning was taken fairly easy recovering from the previous night and waiting for Nic to rock up on the next bus. She arrived and we sorted out what we were going to do that night and she went off to do the sound of music tour. I decided to go read some more of my book in the park. While reading Stef came and sat down and had a chat about how much she loved the Mirabelle Garten, and I agreed that it is one of the prettiest gardens that I had seen. That evening Nic, Stef, Arija and I all went out for some food, and Arija and I decided to splurge and purchase a meat extravaganza for two at around 20 euro each. I was great to have some real meat for the first time since Australia. Damn I need a good barbeque.

The next morning Nic and I went to the Ice Caves which are apparently the biggest in the world. The trip out there was massively picturesque and the mountain trail up to the caves was astounding. The caves themselves were good, but suffered from what every tour in Salzburg suffers from, which is. “It’s good, but is it worth $AUD100?” Unfortunately, the answer is probably no. However, I’m glad I did it, so I guess it is worth it in the long run.

Nic and I got back to the hostel, after getting a curry at Indigo, and after an hour chilling out we joined some friends at the bar to participate in the quiz night. We didn’t come last, but missed a couple of easy ones that could have won it for us. After the quiz night we went out, again starting our night at Flip, where we met some Austrian dudes. That’s the first time so far on my holiday that I have actually met locals. Inevitably when I go out, I end up speaking to fellow travelers, so it was really cool to hang out with some locals, go to pub and clubs frequented by locals and drinks the drinks that locals drink. At about 4am we dragged our ass home, emptied the vending machine with our late night munchies and headed to bed.

My time in Salzburg was spent doing two things. A) avoiding all things “Sound of Music”, as the movie was filmed here, there is a lot of avoiding to be done, and b) Spending money. Austria is expensive and I managed to burn close to 400euro in 5 days in Salzburg. It’s a bit scary to wonder how I’m going to cope earning 400 euro a month while working on the snow an hour down the road. I did really enjoy Salzburg though, and that’s the main thing, if I’m gonna be spending close to 6 months in the area, I’m really glad I like the area.

Vienna – Take Three

2009-07-28T04:05:00.000-07:00

On my return from Brno, I once again had a one nighter in the wonderful, money-sucking city of Vienna. I had planned to catch up with Charlie for a drink but nothing huge as I had to be on the bus at 8am the following morning. When I had arrived and checked into the hostel, I had a real shower as I had been rushing my showers for the last three days in Brno due to the fact that it was all communal. After washing 4 days on sweat and sunscreen out of my hair I called Charlie to see what she was up to. Charlie and two French dudes from her hostel were at Schonnbrunn, the Habsburgs summer palace. I had wanted to see this place due to it having a hedge maze in the grounds and I’d always wanted to do one of them, so I got on a tram and went to meet them at the palace.

The Habsburgs were terribly over the top, drunk on their own power and married within their family to preserve the purity of their own bloodline, resulting in a litany of retarded offspring, but holy moly, they sure know how to build a palace! Schonnbrunn is gorgeous. The palace is nice enough, but the grounds are truly astounding. I was walking around, thinking “yeah, this is all nice and palacey”, and then I walked around a corner and looked up the manicured gardens behind the palace, leading all the way up the hill and had to stop and say “whoa”. How very Keanu Reeves of me…

After walking around the gardens I met up with Charlie and the two French dudes, Ivan and Vincent. We went to the Hedge Maze, which was very fun, even though it was nowhere near long enough, and not terribly difficult. It was very fun getting to the lookout point in the middle first, and then looking at the other walking around and giving them false directions. After that we all played around with some other stuff in the garden area, such as a xylophone thing that you work with your feet, and some stepping stones that shoot out water as you try to run across them, before making our way out of the Palace.

Charlie came back to my hostel as she needed to use the internet to book her next hostel in Budapest, while Ivan and Vincent went home. After Charlie and I had eaten and she had sorted her hostel, I walked her back to her hostel along Mariahilfer Strasse, getting some fantastic Gelato along the way.

I came back to my hostel with designs of having a quiet night pottering around on the internet and doing my washing. All those was going to plan until I got a call from Charlie telling me to come out to the Travel Shack, where she was meeting the Ivan and Vincent. I decided I might as well, as I hadn’t had a big night in a while after putting a lot of deposits in the sleep bank while in Brno. We got to the travel shack at midnight and Ivan and Vincent were already smashed. Ivan could barely stand up and Vincent was attempting to dirty dance with anyone who walked past, be they male or female. After another wonderful little creature and a jagerbomb, Charlie found a map of Budapest and I went through some cool places for her to go.

I was only going to walk with Charlie up to the first Kebab stand, as I was hungry, but when we got to the main intersection there was a guy who had been in a fight, so I decided that I should walk with her the whole half hour back to her hostel as it didn’t seem as safe as I had originally thought. I got myself a bratwurst along the way and was actually quite enjoying walking through Vienna in the middle of the night when the streets are empty of people. After dropping Charlie back at her hostel, I made the long trek back to my own, finding the French guys out the front, having just been dropped off by the taxi, and still being wildly drunk.

By the time I actually got to bed, it was 4:30am and the sun was coming up. I had to get up in 2 hours, hence the 21euro I had paid for a bed would work out to be 10.50 euro per hour. Vienna is still trying to suck money from my wallet, but I actually had a really good night, so even though I feel like someone scrubbed my eyeballs while I sit here on the bus to Salzburg, I refuse to have my good mood depleted.

Brno –World Superbikes

2009-07-27T06:13:00.001-07:00

Brno is the second biggest city in the Czech Republic as every year it hosts a round of the World Superbikes at the Automotodrom about 20kms out of town. This was, obviously, my reason for being here. Without a round of the Supers, I would’ve never had any reason to come here, and that would not have been a great loss. Brno is pretty, but so is every other place in Europe. I really should stop comparing towns to Perth, as most towns are going to be prettier. As far as European towns go, Brno is nothing special, a run of the mill town of 370,000 people with nothing particularly amazing to set it apart.

I got into Brno after the Budapest/Vienna debacle at around 4pm. I had no real idea where my hostel was, but knew that it was close to the train station so I called the hostel and was given directions over the phone. Travellers hostel is only a hostel in the summer, at all other times it is a school. Hence, all the rooms are classrooms, complete with a cabinet which contains, I can only assume, shit that the kids have made. The beds look like they’ve been stolen from a pre WW1 hospital and they don’t have pillows. I know that it’s still better than sleeping on the ground, but I would’ve expected pillows for AUD$24. Plus, the showers are all together, so I’d better make sure I don’t drop any soap…

The first night I just went out and walked around Brno, taking a few photos and seeing the sights. I got an early night, going to bed and watching some of the movies I ripped of Ryan Hard drive in Budapest. This is a trip on my own, and as such, I am using it as down time. There will be no huge nights out. No heavy drinking sessions. There will be sleep. There will be bikes. Just the way I like it. And comes at a good time to recharge the batteries for section 2 of the trip as I have now lost all the friends I have made over the last six weeks on the bus and the best way to make new friends is to get smashed. It’s gonna be a boozy time in Salzburg and Munich.

On day two in Brno I got up and went out to the track for qualifying. The Automotodrom is a breathtaking race track, nestled in the Czech woods and full of elevation changes and sweeping corners. I would love to come back and ride it someday. They do track days here, but you have to have your own bike, which makes things a little difficult at the moment. Ben Spies had a cracker in Superpole, and would be the man to beat on Sunday.

Race day at the track and it still wasn’t anywhere as nuts as I would have expected. The crowd was adorned in a variety of shirts bearing the number 96 for Jakob Smrz, the Czech rider in Superbikes. I went into the paddock, and was stoked to see a bunch of riders and team bosses from less than 2m away. I won’t bore you with the names, but the standout was telling John Hopkins “welcome back to racing, Hopper” and having him reply, “thanks man”. The races themselves were pretty good. Fabrizio punted Spies out of the lead, and the race and Biaggi went on to win race 1. Crutchlow ran out of fuel on the 2nd last lap, leaving a four way tussle for the win in Supersport, with Ant West (aussie) going from 5th to 1st in a lap before getting pushed wide on the last corner and coming in 2nd behind Fabian Foret. In the 2nd superbike race, Spies was obviously not going to be anywhere near people likely to punt him off, and cleared out from the start, although Biaggi did make a late charge, it was always Spies’ race.

Getting back to the hostel was pretty easy, and I then went out to a steakhouse the girl who worked at the hostel. It was reasonably cheap and they had broccoli, which I hadn’t eaten since Perth, so while the steak was nothing special, it was still an okay meal.

The next morning I got up fairly early, quite excited to be leaving Brno. The only thing I can really say for it is that it is not full of tourists, like Prague, so most of the people you are seeing are Czech. With that is mind, the Czech women are pretty hot, and also as it is summer, they are all wearing those little summer dresses. Damn.

It was, all in all a very quiet weekend, as I avoided any sort of big night. The racing was great, and it was cool to see it. It did just kinda make me miss Nate and Billy as it would have been cool to have people to talk to, watch the race with, barrack with etc. I guess this closes sector one of my solo holiday and gives me an opportunity to look back on a few things I have noticed.

Berlin and Budapest are the bomb. I have now been to Groningen and Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Berlin and Dresden in Germany, Prague, Cesky Krumlov and Brno in the Czech Republic, Vienna and Budapest. While in Berlin and in Budapest I actually looked up what sort of work was available for English speakers who don’t speak the local language. That’s how much I loved them. If the right job came along, I would live in either of those cities in a heartbeat.

There are shitloads of Aussies travelling around, and we don’t seem to mind doing it on our own. Of all the people that I have met that are solo travelers, there has only been one non-aussie. You don’t actually meet many locals as you travel around, except for the people who run the hostels. The best you can hope for is to maybe meet some Czech girls in Budapest or something like that.

European people wear awful jeans. I know this sounds like a weird observation, but it seems that standard stylish plain blue jeans with a good cut are not in fashion. People wear jeans with ridiculous paint all over them, or tears all through them, or the best one, with patches of green camouflage material sewn all over them. Eeeww.

Europe is gorgeous. I really haven’t seen a town that nearly picture perfect. Although, I must admit, I have only really been in city centres most of the time, where the old town is located. The history of each town is amazing, and although most places on the northern loop had to contend with forty odd years of communism, they are all remarkably modern, clean, efficient and prosperous.

Busabout is fantastic. I’m really glad I did Busabout as it makes it so easy to meet new people, yet gives you the flexibility to do exactly the trip you want to do. I’m looking forward to many drinks in Salzburg and Munich before heading down to Switzerland blowing wads of cash doing white water rafting and other extreme stuff.

I really miss my friends back in Perth. I love this lifestyle (who wouldn’t) and living out of a suitcase doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I don’t even miss my range of awesome t-shirts that I left in London, or TV (I do miss AFL a little). But I really miss going out for a ride with the boys, dragging Sara shopping with me, getting yelled at for walking too slow with Bec, having a joke about Cooper’s biological Dad with Trent and Tess and all the general hanging out with nothing to do and just having a good time with all my friends. You don’t get that here. A chilled out day is a wasted day, and that is a cardinal sin. I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t know if I can do this for five years, and Nate getting the awesome promotion and move to Melbourne just makes me want to go back there more. I’ll definitely be here for the winter, as I’ve pretty much already got the job, and Canada will happen as if I don’t do it now I’ll never do it. I guess I’ll make the decision about the 2nd year in Canada, the year in South America and the 2 years working in the UK after that.

Well, that’s it for now. I’m waiting for the train to pull away from Breclav in the Czech Republic, and then I’ll be shortly be back in Austria. I hope I like the rest of Austria more than Vienna likes me, as I’ll be in this country for the whole winter.

The debacle - Getting from Budapest to Vienna and then Brno

2009-07-24T11:17:00.001-07:00

The idea was to get back to Vienna on Thursday afternoon, get out to Spittelau to get my World Superbike tickets, and then jump back on a train to Brno, arriving Thursday night. This would give me a night to take it easy and get accustomed to Brno, where I expect the English to be fairly scratchy, and I’ll need time to get anywhere.

We all took it a little too easy leaving Budapest, so we missed the 11:10am train back to Vienna. The next one was at 1:10pm, so we caught that. Halfway to Vienna we realized that we were running 40min behind schedule, which would put me back at Vienna Westbahnhof at 5pm, and mean that I would be unlikely to get my tickets before the office shuts. I called Sara in Perth and she was nice enough to get me their number. I called, but it went through to message bank, which of course is all in German, so I don’t even know if it was the correct number. I don’t know my UK mobile number off the top of my head yet, so I had to get Hannah to read my number out to me as I was leaving a message, but she didn’t give me that last digit as her phone didn’t display it. At that point I didn’t care, because I figured if you’re not answering your phone at 4pm, then you’ve already gone home.

We arrived into Vienna at 5pm and I ran to the Metro line to get to Spittelau, but the instructions were in my laptop and I hadn’t looked at them for a while. I knew it was on the brown line, but I couldn’t remember which termination it was. Both trains were at the platform going either way. I chose one and jumped on. I chose wrong. So I had to get off at the next stop, and change platforms, eventually getting to the GPticketshop.com offices at 5:30pm. Nobody was there. Christopher was fucked.

I returned back to Wombats hostel to find that there were no rooms available, but I did manage to get a room in a hostel around the corner. Hannah, Jaz, Kas, Ryan and me all went out for a few drinks at the travel shack that evening, and I must say that I was glad to have one more night to hang out with those guys, Hannah especially as we’ve been travelling together since Amsterdam and she’s become like my little sister. I won’t catch her again when I get back from Brno, as she’s off to Italy and I make my way down to Spain. But I guess that’s the best and worst thing about Busabout. You’re always meeting people, but you’re always losing people too.

The next morning I got out to the GPticketshop.com offices at 9:30 and picked up my tickets. They had got my message the night before, but couldn’t call me due to my number not being complete. That was more than a little irritating, but I got my gear and got a tram to Sudbahnhof to catch the train to Brno.

When I got to Sudbahnhof I was informed that the train was 40 minutes late. This turned out to be an hour. Vienna hates me. And I’m starting to hate it back.

Budapest – One place. Two cities. All sorts of awesome.

2009-07-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

Something I think I knew but had long since forgotten is that Budapest is actually 2 cities. Buda, the old town nestled in rolling hills and cliffs, dominated by the castle district looks eastward over the Danube to flat, modern Pest. Also, the name Budapest is always mispronounced. The ‘s’ sound in Hungarian is written as ‘sz’ and ‘s’ in Hungarian is pronounced ‘sh’. Hence, Budapest is pronounced ‘Budapesht’ by the locals.

Enough of the pointless facts. This place rocks. We all know how much I loved Berlin, but Budapest is cheaper, prettier, has a more temperate climate and is just as full of gorgeous women. However, English is less prevalent (I still got by with no major issues), the history is less impressive and its language is nigh on impossible to learn. Either way, Budapest is a fantastic city, and the equal of any other European capital.

We got into Budapest at around 4pm and after speaking to the tourist information office at the Keleti train station we figured out roughly where we had to go. Once we found the correct train line we were on our way on Budapest’s extremely efficient public transport system. We got off at the correct stop to be about 400m away from our hostel, Good Morning Budapest, according to Google maps. Google maps was wrong and we walked up the street for another two blocks before we decided that Ryan, Kas and Hannah would sit down at the Irish pub on the corner while I continued to look for the hostel. After walking up and down the street for another 15minutes I remembered that I had cancelled my Sunday night’s stay and would have their phone number in my phone. I got hold of Esther, the girl from the hostel and she directed me to where I had to go. As I thought I had found it she asked if I was wearing a blue t-shirt (which I was) and I looked up to see her waving from the third floor of a building with absolutely no signage. I got the other guys from the pub, which as it turns out was directly across the road and we went to Good Morning Budapest. It had hostel written in magic marker on the buzzer and that would be the only way to tell there is a hostel there. We were buzzed in and looked if a dank smelling hallway, we walked through seeing a rundown cement outdoor area filled with weeds and went up the old marble spiral staircase. At this point I was internalizing my worries at the quality of the hostel, while Hannah was vocalizing her fears that we had made a mistake. However we walked through the door to the hostel on the third floor and found a clean, new hostel with a great kitchen and free internet and wifi. Esther welcomed us, we unpacked, and sat down in Budapest, pleased with our efforts of not getting completely lost and having a nice hostel to use as our base from with to explore.

That evening we walked down to the Parliament building, which is a brilliant piece of neo gothic architecture and walked along the Danube on the Pest side down to Vorosmarty square. The city was gorgeous, bathed in the crimson sunset, the spires of the numerous cathedrals on the Buda side cutting through the orange light reflecting off the Danube and the buildings along the Pest foreshore. At Vorosmarty square we caught the Yellow metro line up to Octagon and ate a cheap fantastic meal at Kocisma Kiado. The urinal in the Kocisma had a cushion at the wall at head height, so if you were too drunk to stand up straight you could just lean your head against it while taking a piss. I don’t know about the cleanliness of such an idea, but it’s a bit of lateral thinking on their part.

The next morning we went out for breakfast, where a full English breakfast (admittedly not a huge serving) cost me about 6 Australian dollars. After that good, cheap breakfast we got the metro up to Heroes square where we took a bunch of photos and walked around the city park, finding one of the natural hot spring fed baths in Budapest and a few market stalls. After going back to our hostel to get our swimwear we got some lunch, where I had a traditional Hungarian dish made with veal, dumpling and spiced with paprika (yes, it was awesome) we went to the Baths. Two pools are fed directly from the hot springs and therefore hover at around 38’C, the pool in the middle is basically the standard temperature you would expect for a pool on a 32’ day. It was great fun at the baths, especially when we tried to create our own whirl pool and when we started messing around with the underwater camera.

At about 6:30 we made our way home and got ready to go out on the town. The Hungarian Formula 1 race was on this weekend, so there was heaps of stuff going on. We planned to hit up a few clubs on our way down to a rave that was happening on a mutherfucking boat. The guy in our hostel said he likes a place called Morrison’s 2, which did 500forint (about $3.50AUD) cocktails before 9pm. As it was 8:00 by the time we were ready, we headed down there, with instructions for Mel and Jasmine, who were staying at another hostel, to meet us there. We arrived and immediately bought 4 cocktails each. This night was going to get loose.

Mel and Jaz arrived, we drank our cocktails and headed to a bar called Godor. It is a public square in central Pest where all the train lines converge. The bar is actually under the pond and has a glass ceiling so you can look up through the water. The whole outdoor square is also full of people, drinking their alcohol either bought at local convenience stores or the removable bars set up around the square. We started talking to some English guys who are driving from London to Beijing, although, they are ditching the Land cruiser in Kazakhstan and taking a train the rest of the way.

After Godor, Mel decided to call it a night and go back to the hostel, while we set off to look for a summer bar that is set up in the university square. Unfortunately we had lost our book with the directions, and hence had to stop some people and ask them, also unfortunately, they had no idea what we were talking about, but after a few wrong turns and some crankiness, we finally found it and sat down for a drink. Hannah and Jaz sat next to a table full of Hungarian dudes and started talking to them. It all seemed in pretty good fun, but afterwards we were told that they wanted us to save them. Why is it that women don’t know that men rarely pay attention to sideways glances and innuendo? If you want something done, tell us!

After leaving Treffort, we had to make the very long trek to the motherfucking boat club, known as A38. After a long walk across a bridge, where we passed a club under the bridge on the Buda side that was absolutely banging, foolishly we decided to carry on to the boat. However, by the time we got to the boat, it was only 1:30am, but they were closing and they were not letting anyone else on. Quite a disappointment, as we’d heard numerous reports that it was a really cool club. And it did look cool. From the outside. It was, however, 1:30am on a Tuesday night, in a city that only has a slightly higher population than Perth, so I can’t be too upset.

We walked up to the nearest bridge where the tram would take us back to our hostel, only to find the trams were no longer running at 2am. A bus pulled up in front of a crowd of about 50 people outside a nearby club called Rio. We decided to jump on the bus too and see where it goes. It was going in the right direction, and if it stayed on that road it would take us within a block of our hostel, so we ran to the bus and climbed aboard with fifty inebriated Hungarians. To our great relief, the bus never turned off the main road and we were home within 10 minutes without spending a dollar on a taxi. Brilliant.

The next morning we headed out to the supermarket quite early and bought a bunch of food to cook up a big, delicious breakfast. Hannah cracked the shits that she couldn’t find pancake mix, but it was a kick ass breakfast all the same. We then headed out for the free walking tour of Budapest. It was probably the worst tour I’ve been on. One of the girls running the tour was hot and really friendly as I spent most of the time walking along talking to her. However the delivery seemed amateurish and was filled with the same info over and over again. It was unfortunate as the places we walked to such and the Buda castle at the top of the hills and St Matthias cathedral are really beautiful, and probably has heaps of interesting stories attached to them.

That night we had planned to go on the pub crawl, but we were the only people who turned up, hence it became pointless for us to pay 3500forint for a pub crawl that would be just us. The guys running the pub crawl were pretty nice and took as to the first pub anyway, which was called Instant and was in what looked to be an old apartment building. The interior ground floors was all bar and standard seating areas, where the stairs went up to rooms with lounges and chairs in smaller, dimly lit rooms. I picked up Jaz, who was running late and we then headed to another bar which the pub crawl guys said was pretty good, called Szimpla (pronounced simpla). After a few drinks at the bohemian Szimpla, which was a warehouse shells full of lounges, fuseball table and car shells altered to be seated areas and tables, we ran into Kelly, who had been at our last few stops with Busabout, but had just come from two days in Bratislava. She was on a pub crawl organized by her hostel, and they informed us of the next place they would be going which was a big club with a roof garden chillout area at the top.

We left Szimpla and Hannah decided she wanted to go back to the hostel as she was feeling sick, so we gave her directions to stay on main roads and let her walk the 5 blocks back to the hostel. We arrived at the big nightclub and went up the dimly lit rooftop bar. Jaz had some mini cards in her purse so we sat there drinking, laughing and playing bullshit for a few hours. We were all having a great time, laughing loudly and often, but we still had an inebriated Hungarian girl come and ask us if the club was so boring that we needed to play cards. We explained that this was a chillout area, and it was actually quite fun. We asked her to join us, but I don’t think she saw the allure of playing bullshit with a bunch of Aussies and a Brit at a rooftop bar in the middle of Budapest at 2am. I walked Jasmine home at the end of the night, whereas Ryan and Kas decided to go to Jolly Rogers, the local strip club. As I found out the next morning, they soon wish they hadn’t as it was a very expensive beer, and one of their more uncomfortable experiences of their holiday.

We packed up all our stuff the next day. Said goodbye to the girl at the Hostel, who’s name I can pronounce, but would have no idea how to write in English. All three of the girls that worked at Good Morning Budapest were smoking hotties, and very pleasant, even when we were ringing the bell to get let back into the hostel at four in the morning, so that’s one more pleasant memory from Hungary.

As far as Budapest goes, I will come here again. It’s everything Prague promised to be. It’s beautiful. It’s cheap. It’s not full of tourists. It is full of lovely people who are friendly and happy to help. It’s the country that initiated the fall of the iron curtain. It’s full of great bars and clubs and gorgeous girls. It’s Buda. It’s Pest. It’s awesome. It’s Budapest.

Vienna – Where it all came crashing down

2009-07-20T08:38:00.000-07:00

I rolled into 32’ heat and a hostel that didn’t have airconditioning when I arrived in Vienna o n Friday night. I was still sporting a sore throat that had hung around since Dresden and was feeling like it was moving its way towards my lungs. After checking in and taking a shower I organized a few things and then headed out for some 6 euro schnitzel down the street with a bunch of the people off our bus.

The schnitzel was good, and after the meal everyone headed down to the travel shack, which is a bar specifically for backpackers and tourists. It immediately struck me as the shittest bar in Australia, just in Vienna. I was in no mood for drinking and without some serious drunkenness, this pub would remain completely unacceptable. A few of us decided to head into the city for the evening and look around. Vienna is a city filled with beautiful and overly excessive buildings, thanks to the ruling Habsburgs centuries of decadence as the rulers of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

The next day I was feeling significantly sicker, but went out to do some shopping with Hannah and Nic. I needed sunglasses after losing two pairs to the Vltava and had decided to go something adequately stupid like mirrored aviators. At around 11am it started absolutely pissing down with rain. We had gone from 32’ and hot to 16’ and wet in one day. We spent the rest of the day at the hostel working out what we would do for the rest of our trips. I have now decided that I will be going to La Tomatina. This decision cost me about $400 for the accommodation and the bus for the 40km out to Bunol, which is the town where La Tomatina occurs on the last Wednesday in August every year. I then had many other things to re-arrange as hanging around on the west coast of Spain waiting for La Tomatina means certain other things get thrown around. I now have flights to Paris to meet Kate, Porto where Nic and I will catch a train down the Lagos for a few days before going up to Lisbon for 2 days, then back to Madrid, out to Stuttgart in order to catch the train to Salzburg for my 3 week trial at Alpen-rider in the Austrian Alps, over the Oktoberfest period. That night we all went out to see the new Harry Potter movie at the English cinema down the road from our hostel. We were sat 2 rows from the front and the movie had an interval. Other than that, it wasn’t anything special.

The next morning I woke up sicker than ever, even though I’d been off the turps for 2 days and hadn’t been doing anything strenuous. I was supposed to do a grape and winery tour that I had already paid 48euro for, but I needed to be smart and see a doctor. I would be in Hungary the next day, and four days later in backwater Czech Republic, so this would be my last chance for over a week to easily see an English speaking doctor. The doctor quickly diagnosed me with a bacterial throat and lung infection, charged me 80euro and gave me a prescription for antibiotics. So before the day had even started I was down about 150 euros, plus the fact that I was only staying in Vienna on the Sunday night as I was supposed to be doing the Grape tour. Not happy.

As it turned out, Charlie, the girl I had met in Dresden, was in Vienna for some dance workshops as part on the Vienna dance festival and I got to hang out with her all day. It was a very amusing and affronting day as we both like to search for the other person’s weakness and pick at it for our own amusement. It meant that my conversation revolved around her propensity to have her mouth open in all her photos, how her ‘self cut’ haircut was awful, and how her clothing resembled that of a hobo. Her conversation on the other hand revolved around the pigment fluctuations of my skin, my tiny hands and my age. We both took it all with and laugh and had a great day looking around at all of the buildings, beauty and overpriced food and drink that Vienna had to offer.

That night Nic and I sat down and booked all of our accommodation for Portugal in September. It looks like that is going to be an absolute blast. A couple of the other travelers we have met along the way look like they’ll be meeting us in Lagos so that should be mad fun, and it will be good to have some last minute partying before I have to work for three weeks and be responsible in Austria.

The next morning I woke up with a killer sore next as I slept head to toe with Hannah due to her not wanting to pay for another night in Vienna while waiting to go to Budapest because of my misadventure with the grape tour. I had no problem with this, apart from the fact that she stole the pillow, but at least my throat and chest we feeling better so I was confident I would be back to full fitness for at least some of my time in Budapest.

We said our goodbyes to Nic and some of the other travelers and made our way to the train station to get our tickets to Budapest. Tickets Hannah had ensured us were 38 euro. We got to the counter to find out they are 70 euro. Vienna. It’s a really pretty city, and I can see the quality of life would be excellent if you lived and worked here, but damn it knows how to suck the cash out of your wallet.

Cesky Krumlov – The Greatest and most Awesome town on Earth

2009-07-17T08:16:00.000-07:00

I may have many things to thank Belle for. She was an enormous part of my life for a very long time and someone that will always be special to me, whether we ever live in the same city again or not. About a year ago I received an sms from Belle in the middle of the night telling me of the fantastic day she had on a rafting pub crawl in a small town called Czech Republic, and how she wished I was there to experience it. Due to this recommendation I ensured I would have four days in Cesky Krumlov, and it has been the best time of my trip so far. So thank you for that message, Belle. You were right. Cesky Krumlov rocks.

We arrived in Cesky at about lunchtime and were immediately bonded as a group of about twenty busabouters in this tiny fairytale town near the Austrian border of Czech Republic. The hostel was built in the 13th century and was once part of the city wall, then turned into a hospital, and finally the hostel which it is now. The staff was fantastic, and it was finally that storied hostel experience I was waiting for. Large dorms, good kitchen and great outdoor area meant that everyone socialized with everyone. It was not a cheap hotel with no bathroom in your room, which is what you get at most hostels. It was a traveler’s hostel where everyone had talked to everyone by the time they left.

We got some lunch near the Vlatava River and then went up to the castle. The bear pits, much to my surprise still have bears in them, and the castle, which is the second largest in Czech, has absolutely amazing view out over the town and the valley it sits in. After walking through the castle complex,, astounded by the beauty of the place and taking some silly photos in the superbly manicured castle gardens, we went back to the hostel to make some dinner. Everyone quickly started to get drunk and we continued to bond with drinking games and card games and helping each other cook. The food was as fantastic as the company and loss that I had felt over the past month having lost my brilliant group of close friends that I left in Perth was eased slightly by this new bunch of people from all over the world (mostly Australia and New Zealand) as we talked and drank the night away.

The next day Craig, Hannah and myself were driven up the highest mountain in the area and given kickbikes to make our own way down the mountain back to the hostel. A kickbike is like a cross between a scooter and a mountain bike and when shooting downhill can pick up some serious speed. There were a couple of hairy moments with some blind corners, but we all safely made it back in time for the rafting.

The rafting is what every has heard about Cesky Krumlov, and with good reason. It is freaking awesome. Groups of between 6-10 people are put in a dingy with a few oars and pushed into the river, where you will paddle from campsite to campsite along the river. Each campsite sells food and beer and if you’re smart you’ve brought some of your own beers to have along the way also. The result is a rafting trip where the only effort you need exert is occasionally steering the boat and tying it to the shore and the campsites. At the beginning of the day, everyone is sober, but nobody knows what they are doing so you will hit a few trees, then in the middle you get the hang of it, then by the end you are so drunk that it all starts to go to shit again, but as you’re so drunk, nobody cares.

The third leg was very eventful for our boat. About 5 minutes down the river, Helen realized she had left her purse at the last stop, and wanted to go back for it. The rest of the boat had to let her know that there was no way we could get back there as the current is very strong, so we continued. Then realized we had lost an oar, which we then saw float past the boat and into a nearby area of reeds, we paddled over there and I got out to get the oar, giving my Ducati Oakley’s to Courtney. I got the oar, but the boat was so far into the reeds, that all the guys had to get out of the boat so it floated enough to get us out. As we pushed through the reeds my glasses got brushed off Courtney’s head and fell to the bottom of the Vlatava. Never to be seen again. After looking for them briefly it was time to let them go and we continued, only to find that somewhere along the way we had lost our three remaining beers.

By the end of the day, we were all drunk. We were all injured in some way, as the Vlatava is quite shallow, very fast flowing and rocky. We were all wet. We were all hungry. We were all aware that we had just experienced one of the greatest days of our respective holidays. Having made single serving holiday friends that may now become actual friends, and memories that we would never lose. Back at the hostel we continued the party for a little while, as most people said that they would extend their stay in Cesky. I however was glad that I still had two days left.

The next morning the reality of extending had sunk in and everybody realized that they had plans which could not be changed. So I lost my new crew at noon when the bus rocked up, taking my new friends away and bringing me people that would soon be my friends, such in the nature and power of Cesky Krumlov. Steve and Nic, whom I had met in Prague arrived with one of their friends, Ryan. I took them for a brief tour of town and then let them explore the castle as I was feeling like crap (not hungover, my throat has been awful since Berlin and would heal if only I would stop having so much fun!). I went back to the hostel and had a bit of a nap, before waking up for free beer Wednesday night. Yes, Free Beer. Hostel 99 at Cesky Krumlov. Gotta love it! I was thinking about having a Beer free day, but instead I had a free beer day. Oh well. That’s fun too. After a night filled with drinking, paying bullshit and listening to the live band in the bar playing really funky, beat filled Gypsy Music, I finally retired to bed.

The next day I awoke knowing that day four would be another day two but with different people. Nic, Steve, Ryan, myself and a few other did the kickbikes down the mountain. We then set up and went out on the rafts for another day of drunken water shenanigans. I tossed a few people in the water on the last leg, and once again lost my new el cheapo sunnies. It seems I owe the Vlatava eye protection for some reason.

That night we all went out to the local (and only) Discotheque. There was a bunch of very serious looking Czech watching out very crazy bunch of tourists dance around like dickheads on the dancefloor. Although one particularly hardcore female punter did jump up on the platform where a pole was fixed and start showing off some of the seedier dance moves in her arsenal, which did take the attention of most of the men. We left after about an hour and went back to the hostel and the club and music were shit and it was really hot up there. We walked home, soaking in a little of Cesky in the darkness of the cobbled street, with the only noise being our own chatter and the river rushing by.

The next morning it was time to pack up my stuff and move out. I handed my keys back to Alvaro, the manager, and thanked him for an amazing time. I let him know that if he was ever in need of staff, he should send me an email, as I would love to be able to work and live in Cesky for an extended period of time. I said my goodbyes to the new friends I had made that I was leaving behind and waited for the bus to arrive. With great pleasure I informed to new arrivals that they had made a brilliant decision, and that Cesky Krumlov would be a spot they would not soon forget.

Prague - The Beauty and the Beast

2009-07-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

Upon arrival in Prague on Wednesday night I had planned to take it fairly easy, possibly go into town and take a look around, but nothing too serious. This changed when I bumped into David and Linton who I had met on the bus from Berlin a few days earlier. They had done the Prague pub crawl the night before and were wearing the T-shirts to prove it. They apparently had such a good time that they were going again, and after very little coercion I decided to go too.

So, my first night in Prague, I am led into town following David and Linton, when I get to where the pub crawl starts I am handed a pint of beer for myself and a 2 litre pitcher of beer to take to the town square to fill up other crawlers beers. I met a few girls from Kent, near London, which must produce some pretty awesome people as that’s where the Green’s spring from. By the time we got to the crawl bar where everything starts off with an hours of free beers, wine vodka and cranberry and absinthe shots, the night was already getting loose.

Nothing makes the ladies drop like flies like free shots and a lot of guys who want you to get drunk. I carried Laura, one of the Kent girls to the next bar, and then I think she went back to her hostel. She was followed soon after by another of her friends outside the next bar. Then Mel, a girl in Hannah’s room fell over in the street and lost the ability to walk. All in all only about 50% would have made it to the massive 6 level nightclub next to Charles Bridge. I was reasonably loose, but not messy as I had spent most of the evening with Holly, one of the Kent girls, while lost most of the people I had gone on the crawl with over the various levels. After a while I found myself outside the nightclub realizing that I had no map, no friends and no idea where I was. I started talking to a few guys from Bristol, which mostly consisted of me giving them shit as the English cricket team is crap. I finally caught up with Hannah around 4am and we got a taxi back to the hostel. Taxi drivers in the Czech Republic are nuts. The guy was on wet streets and he was absolutely flying along. Oh well. At least we got home quick.

The next day it took a little while to get going but I managed to make my out of the hostel to check out the city in the daylight. Prague is an absolutely beautiful place, but it is completely full of tourists and on that first day it did little to impress me apart from the fact that it is pretty and some nice old buildings. After going back to the hostel, Hannah and I went to the shops to get some food for dinner and after eating, realized that we both felt pretty average so decided not to go out again in the evening and start early the next morning. At about 1am the Irish girls in my room came in massively drunk and laughing themselves stupid. I can distinctly remember one of them yelling “Shot op, Kairtee” repeatedly, which made me chuckle, even though I was trying to sleep.

The next morning we had planned to go out the Kutna Hora, the town where the Ossuary (Bone Church) is located. I was a little disappointed by it, as somehow I had got the impression that it was built out of human bones, but instead it’s just a normal church that effectively uses human bones as some form of macabre Christmas decorations. I’m not disappointed that I saw it, as you’ll not see anything like that anywhere else in the world; however it all felt a little tacky to me. In the afternoon I went looking for a Vodafone as I needed some credit , however it turns out that Czech Vodafones only sell credit for Czech numbers, which didn’t help me much.

That evening Hannah, Clive and I went out to CrossClub, which is a Bar/Club near the hostel. It’s all decorated with car parts, with one room downstairs having moving car engines above the tables. The lights are integrated into the engines, and the whole place looks very cool. I started talking to some girls from the Midlands in the UK. This holiday though Europe was supposed to be about meeting people from different cultures, but I am quickly learning that unless I drastically change the way I behave, I will spend all my time talking to Aussies, Kiwis and the occasional Brit. Not that I’m all that bothered by it, as nearly everyone of met on this trip has been great fun.

On Saturday morning Hannah and I got up and did the bike tour of Prague. Both the bike tours of Berlin and Amsterdam had been fantastic, so I must admit that I probably did expect a fair bit from this, and was disappointed. The tour guide didn’t have fantastic English, he didn’t take us to what I would have thought would be must see sights, such and the Astronomical Clock, and most of his information was his personal stories about places, rather than information about why it was here and historical stories about the place. And we got rained on, which didn’t make me any happier.

That night we decided to do the Pub Crawl again as another busabout of people we knew had rolled in the night before and wanted to do the crawl. It went along in a similar fashion as the last time, except that went I walked out of the club at 4am, I had a map, and a clue. I decided to take the night tram home, and walked along through the streets of Prague to the tram stop. When I had arrived there it was a 20 minute wait for the tram so I decided to walk the 1 hour trek back to the hostel. It was actually hugely exciting and fulfilling to walk through the streets of a city I had always dreamed of, as if I was a local heading home after a big night. It was slightly less brilliant when it started to rain, but I was still very pleased with myself when I got back to the hostel.

The next morning I visited the Prague castle and this is where I really started to understand the amazing beauty of city. Looking down from the spectacular grounds of the castle, the huge amounts of annoying tourists and the poor customer service you will receive from pretty much everywhere fade into the background and I finally understood the amazing drawing power of the Czech capital. Prague is simply gorgeous. From every angle any views across the Vlatava and the city up to the Castle are unlike anything I have ever seen in the flesh. It was my fourth day in Prague, and only now was I finally appreciating the reason the place is packs with visitors, and why I would be sad to leave.

Sunday night came around and for my last night in Prague I went up to a beer garden that overlooks the whole city whit a few new friends from Busabout. After a few beers and I nice meal I walked through the city at night and took some photos of the beautiful central European capital at night. Prague belted me around a few nights, and her punches are hard and swift, but when she holds you in her arms, it’s hard to wish you were anywhere else.

Dresden – Germany’s schizophrenic child

2009-07-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

I arrived with Hannah into Dresden. Hannah was still calling it Dredsen at this point, and both of us were wondering if it was a good choice to leave the friends we had made and not continue on to Prague. We walked to the hostel and were too early to check in, so we put our bags in the luggage room and checked the place out.

Dresden is split down the middle by the Elbe River. It is split into two sections, Altstadt and Nuestadt (old town and New town). It is probably most famous for the fact that the Allies bombed the shit out of Dresden in the last days of WW2, completely flattening all of old town, and most of new town. All of old town has now been completely rebuilt to look exactly as it did before the war, but it makes a bit of a misnomer out of old town, as many of the buildings in New town are older than those in Old town.

Walking around New Town, the place looks like someone has been giving out free spray cans to the local youth, as there is tagging everywhere. The cars rumble down the cobblestoned streets, giving you some warning that you are looking the wrong way as you go to cross the street. Hannah and I stopped for a burger at Burger Meister, where I ordered a chicken burger with analas. I didn’t know what analas was, and the German girl behind the counter didn’t know what the English word was, neither did the German dudes hanging out waiting for their takeaway food. In the end she went into the kitchen and grabbed some analas, and as it turns out, it’s pineapple. Problem solved.

After checking into the hostel, we walked around looking for a supermarket and just checking out the town in general. We walked down to the river’s edge to check out old town, and this is why the place is so schizophrenic; Old Town has no graffiti, no tattooed, pink haired punks and dogs walking around wandering into shops. It is however, spectacularly picturesque. It was around 4opm, and like most of Europe in the time I have been here, it likes to rain between 4-6pm so we headed back to the hostel hoping to find a supermarket on the way.

That night Hannah and I had a few drinks at the hostel and she went off to bed fairly early. I decided to walk around the town and get a feel for it on a Monday night. To my surprise, there were people out everywhere, pubs were nearly full, people were drinking on corners and yet there was very little of the agro you would normally associate with such an event in Australia. As I walked the street of new Town in Dresden, I felt safer than I would normally feel doing the same through Northbridge or any similar drinking area of Australia.

The next morning Hannah and I got up fairly early to go out to the nearby town of Meissen, which we had heard was worth a look. It was about a 30min train ride from Dresden, and once we had figured out how to validate our ticket, we were on our way. The trains in Germany are fantastic. Clean, new and smooth. More than once we had to check that we weren’t in first class as it just felt too nice to be the seats we had purchased for 7 euro.

Upon arrival in Meissen we could see the castle in the distance on the other side of the river and started walking towards it. The cathedral style castle is known as Albrechtsburg, and built high up on a steep hill next to the river Elbe. We wandered through the narrow, cobbled streets until we found a steep passage of narrow steps leads up to Albrechtsburg and a beautiful view over the small town of Meissen and the surrounding hills. Hannah and I stopped on the way down for some lunch. We had both decided to have Schnitzel and chips for lunch. She was charged with ordering the food, and apart from knot knowing what ‘pommes’ were when talking to the proprietor, felt pretty confident she had ordered correctly…. Until we each got a plate of chips and no schnitzel for lunch. Oh well. We were both confused how she failed to convey the only German word she used, but it saved us some money, so we ate our chips and went on our way.

We both felt pretty ratshit when we got back to Dresden (we walked up a lot of steps!), so we bought some groceries and Hannah had a lie down while I went out to have a look around more of New Town. New town is definitely where the life of the place is, with hundreds of people at the local park enjoying the sunshine, and usually an icecream. I walked around the town, trying to soak up the atmosphere for another few hours before going back to the hostel for a nap before dinner.

I cooked up some decent but unspectacular spaghetti Bolognese for dinner as we sat around talking to some other hostel guests. There was Christine, Anna and KC from Atlanta, Georgia, who were good fun, both for their sweet personalities and their propensity to use the word “y’all” when referring to anyone. Charlie, who was in Dresden for 2 weeks from Leeds doing a dance workshop and West, who is a true traveler. He was born in South Africa, has lived in NZ for 5 years and Aus for 3. He likes to go to a place and work and stay there for a while. None of this speed travelling like I am doing. He’s definitely got a point, because I could definitely live in Dresden, as I could in Berlin, so I guess it would be nice to one day do both.

West, Charlie and I went out for a beer at a nearby outdoor pub that had been set up in what felt like a gravel parking lot. The conversation eventually got to peoples preferred word for ‘vagina’ (I’m pretty sure it was Charlie’s fault) with Charlie using “noonnie”, West saying “box” and due to it really being the only word Belle used, it was “minge” for me, with a special mention of ‘VeJayJay’ for Sara and those guys back at the Douglas street party palace.

Charlie had to get up early for her dance class the next day so she retired to bed while West and I stayed up talking to the girls from Georgia back at the hostel bar. Again, it mostly revolved around their amusing accents and the fact that it seemed one of them had mistaken India for America on the map (although I do feel that Christine was putting this stupidity on, in order to be funny). At about 1am we were told the bar was closing and we retired to our dorms, with the girls deciding that singing in the shower at 1am with the window open was pretty funny, and I assume, waking the entire hotel.

Out last morning in Dresden and I needed to actually walk around old town. We wandered in quite early to look around. Once you walk through the main gates, you are confronted not with a beautiful town square as I had imagined, but a construction zone. It seems, like most of Europe at the moment, Dresden is also receiving a facelift. Behind the construction zone there were many astounding baroque buildings, covered with amazingly details statues and carvings.

On the way back to the hostel, I really, really needed to go to the loo. After holding it for over an hour I finally found a public toilet on a busy intersection. It is one of those coin operated ones, so I put in my 30euro and went inside to relieve myself. Unfortunately I read the German instructions and pulled a handle, which I thought would lock the door, but it made the door want to open. I ended up having to wedge it closed with my right foot while I contorted my body into such a position that I could still pee with the door remaining closed. It was very uncomfortable, but still one of the best pees ever.

Back at the hostel packed up all out stuff and went downstairs to wait for busabout. I honestly feel like I only scratched the surface of Dresden, and considering I seriously thought about not bothering to stop there, I am quite surprised that I am seriously considering coming back here where I am working in Austria. If I hadn’t already booked all of my time up until world superbikes in Brno, I would have stayed for another two days. The beautiful, grungy, old world charm and new school edge of the split personalities of Dresden will have to wait for my next visit.

Berlin - I'm in love

2009-07-06T05:44:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have heard me talk about how much I love Osaka, Japan. I’ve often referred to it as the Melbourne of Japan. Well, in my short time in Europe, I would have to call Berlin the Melbourne of Europe. It has everything, history, culture, activity, life and the soul of an individual. Berlin knows it is different, but has a quiet superiority over other European capitals. Someone get me the t-shirt, because I ‘heart’ Berlin.

We got into Berlin at about 7pm and after check in and settling down for a bit, the crew and myself went out for some food. The crew now consists of Renee from Sydney, Hannah from Newcastle, Clive from Perth, Elleny from Melbourne, Greg from Adelaide and Adrienne from Adelaide. Yes, I was halfway around the planet and hanging out with a bunch of Aussies. We walked around Hackescher Markt looking for a place to eat, when the girls got suckered into sitting down by a waiter and all of a sudden we were eating at some pricey restaurant with an average menu. I had a plan to only eat real German food while in Germany, and hence had the pork, which was very tasty. After most people bitched about the food or price we left the restaurant and looked for a bar. We found a place at the end of a heavily graffitied alley which seemed to be quite popular. Upon walking inside it was decked out like some sort of cheap horror movie with monsters everywhere, and red creepy paint and little monster things in fish tanks set into the bar. We had a few drinks inside and then a few more in the beer garden before heading home to get some sleep before our bike tour the next morning.

Friday morning was bike tour day, and if there is ever somewhere you should do a tour, it’s Berlin. The place has so much history. Endah was our tour guide and was excellent with both his knowledge and delivery. We went through Bebel Platz where the Nazi youths burned over twenty thousand books that didn’t agree with the Nazi’s ideals, down to the Brandenburg Gate, to the Reichstag and more. I won’t go through all of it, as it will sound like a spastic giving a history lesson, but suffice to say there is so much that has happened in Berlin and most of it has some sort of memorial or reminder of its existence.

After the fantastic bike tour we went back to the hostel to chill out for a bit. Hannah and I have decided to split from the busabout for a bit when in Vienna and head over to Budapest for a few days. It should be crazy, as they don’t have a lot of English, and we have zero Hungarian. All part of the fun though! Hannah and I sorted out getting to Budapest, and where we are going to stay. Then we all got ready for the pub crawl. At the pub crawl we went to a whole bunch of bars. Most of which I can’t remember. I was busily chatting up Jessica, the super hot Dutch girl. Unfortunately I suffered a case of being unable to close a barn door, and by 3am it became clear that pretty much everyone I know was stumbling their way home. Luckily our hostel is nearly directly underneath the Berlin TV tower, which is visible from anywhere in Berlin, so my drunken walk home was fairly easy and uneventful.

It is not called a pub crawl because you go to lots of pubs. It’s a pub crawl because when you wake up the next morning, you will feel like a pub just crawled over you. We all felt like 6 bags of dogshit, but we had paid for a walking tour of the third Reich for Friday morning, and nobody wanted to miss it. It was a tough day when your brain is malfunctioning severely, but I made it through the five hour walking tour in blazing sunlight, and I was glad I’d done it. Going through all the places and history that led from the loss of WW1 to the end of Hitler’s third Reich at the end of WW2 was brilliant, even if it was a lot of names and dates that I struggle to recall.

After the third Reich tour ended we were right near the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe so I walked through that. It’s probably the coolest monument I’ve ever seen, as it’s not something you just look at. You can actually walk through it, and it has a definite disorientation about it. After that, we all headed back to our hostel for a rest, some food, and a quiet night in.

On Saturday half the group was going to Prague. Clive, Hannah and I still had two days to explore Berlin. I walked down to the Reichstag, which is basically the German parliament house as you can walk up to the top of the giant glass down and look around. The idea of the clear glass dome is that from now on, anyone can look upon the German government and make sure the mistakes of the past are never repeated. It is a pretty fantastic concept and a brilliant building.

I then made my way down past the Brandenburg gate and found Hannah. We went down to checkpoint Charlie and went through the museum of the same name. Some of the stories of what went on during the construction of the wall and ways people we smuggled out was quite astounding.
After the checkpoint Charlie museum Hannah and I caught the Ubahn (underground) to a section of the Berlin wall where it still has both walls with the death strip in between. It was also very interesting, but sad to see when the Germans on either side of the wall had to go through in their attempt for reunification.
After a full day we went to a traditional German restaurant where I ordered the traditional German specialty of pork knuckle. It tasted great, but it was huge and looked pretty disgusting. I think the German waitress was pretty disappointed when she say how little of it I had managed to eat.

Clive, Hannah and I went out to an entertainment area call Kulture Brueri, which is an old brewery that has been turned into a nightspot with many clubs, bars and a supermarket, which is great for cheap beers that you can walk around the area drinking. We sat outside a bar called “titty twister” for a few drink waiting for the Coyote Ugly show to start at midnight, which was full of German debauchery and fun. We then headed to the club called Franzz, and had a few drinks, but with the exception of one very enthusiastic German gentleman, nobody was dancing so we headed off to an Absinthe bar around the corner. This was the first time I have ever had Absinthe when you melt the sugar cube and mix it with the Absinthe in the style of old time Absinthe users, like Johnny Depp in the Jack the Ripper movie, From Hell. The Absinthe still tastes pretty gross, but it definitely gets cool points for drinking method.

The next morning we headed out to Sachsenhausen memorial and museum. It was the initial design concentration camp where they tested a lot of the things they would use in later concentration camps. Thirty thousand Russian POW’s were killed there, along with countless others. It’s certainly not rivaling Disneyworld for the title of “Happiest Place on Earth”. Pretty much nobody speak while walking around, everyone is just in some sort of solemn trance. It’s hard to believe that what happened could actually happen. I couldn’t get the wash rooms and the morgue out of my head for the rest of the day. Disturbing stuff.

That night we searched out some schnitzel right near our hostel. Unfortunately we got a little lost while looking for it (Hannah’s fault) and walked for ages before realizing where it was and coming back to eat 90minutes after we had left. The schnitzel was good, and we then went down to the city area to take a few photos of the sights at night.

I then packed up my bags in preparation for the early bus departure the next morning when I’ll be heading to Dresden. It’s a pretty country town in Germany and should afford me a few days to do very little and just recover from what is a monster sore throat I have picked up over the last few days. I am sad to be leaving Berlin, but I know one day I will be back here.

Amsterdamage

2009-07-01T10:24:00.000-07:00

Oh, what a difference a few days make!

After what can only be described as a testing few days of loneliness and self doubt in Groningen, I arrived in Amsterdam expecting to spend a lot of time on my own, with only my camera and iPod for company.

I made my way to the hostel by tram, and after missing my stop due to not having the exit procedure sorted, I found myself doing the obligatory tourist moment of standing on an intersection, surrounded by my own luggage, staring at a map and the nearby street signs. I figured it all out with minimal fuss and arrived at my hostel feeling pleased with my ability to navigate from Amsterdam Centraal to the Flying Pig hostel near the tourist hotspot of Leidseplein.

I had a few beers while checking in and immediately noticed that the staff was younger and happier to engage in conversation. This made a welcome change from Groningen, as did my room, which slept 4 and had its own bathroom, compared to the 10 sleeper I had just left.

Stepping out into the streets of Amsterdam I was more excited than at any point on my holiday so far. I wasn’t too tired to think as I was when I arrived in London, and I wasn’t in a place I’d never heard of, as I was in Groningen. I was in the almost universally admired city of Amstrerdam, the place where they displaced the sea and set up the most intelligent drug and censorship system in the world. I walked through Leidseplein, which was full of tourist and basically the same shops that you’d find anywhere in the world, and up to the famous Dam square. There was a soccer court set up in the middle of Dam square, along with a large DJ tent and another tent where women dressed in pink were giving other women manicures. It was a hive of activity, but I found myself a little disappointed. It lacked soul. My first impression with Amsterdam is that it was a large tourist filled shopping mall with a few canals. First impressions are often wrong.

Back at the hostel I met one of my roommates, Nic. He’s from San Francisco and he’s just finished his junior year of college at Gonzaga University. Nic was feeling a bit trippy after partaking in some of the more colourful products that Amsterdam has to offer. He went out to get some food and I went downstairs to the bar as the hostel’s bar was recently renovated and they were having a party to celebrate. After a few beers and chatting with some people I met the other roommate, Renee. She’s from Sydney and was also on the Busabout tour, heading off to Berlin in three days, same as me.

There was also a group of about twenty guys and girls from Worcestershire in the UK. They’re all in their late teens and early twenties and were pretty good fun. I talked with a few of them, and tagged along with them as we went out to go to some clubs. At the first clubs everyone baulked at the 9.5 euro entry fee so we went to a bar for a few drinks, and then went to another club where the girls got in for free and it was 7.5 euros for the guys. Unfortunately they baulked at that too, so we ended up going back to the hostel bar and continuing to drink. Then people moved off all over the place. I started predominantly hanging out with two of the British girls, Kate and Helen. Both of which are absolutely hilarious and probably a little more mature to speak to than their friends. Helen was drunk out of her mind however and whenever we would lose her, Kate and I would find her sitting in the first floor stairwell with some more alcohol in her hand. In some of the numerous times we had lost Helen, Kate and I would walk through Vondel Park, which is directly in front of the hostel. It’s a beautiful park in the daytime, but was absolutely stunning in the middle of the night as the mist comes down and makes it look amazing.

After deciding to go to be three times, and every time finding Helen on the stairwell with more alcohol and staying with her I finally got to sleep around 5am, a big change from the early nights on Groningen. It’s nice to have friends.

The next morning I woke up feeling surprisingly good having only had 2 hours sleep. Renee had hooked up with some Canadian dude, but she looked like she had just fought a Bengal tiger. Obviously hickies are still cool in Canada. After she got over the initial shock of the sight of her neck in the mirror, we went out to do a bike tour of Amsterdam. I was feeling fairly average by the time we left at 10:30am, but promised Renee I would go, so dragged myself out, and it turned out to be the best decision I made in my time in Amsterdam.

The bike tour was fantastic. I cannot stress this enough, if anyone is going anywhere in Europe, always do a bike tour. The terrain in Amsterdam is completely flat, so the bike riding is really easy (as long as you remember to look the opposite way for oncoming traffic). However, by far the best thing about the bike tour was all the information you get about the city from the tour leader. Shaun was great and had been all over the world himself, and had a great informal delivery relating to all things Amsterdam, ranging from the way they pumped out the water to reclaim the land, the reason their drugs laws are the way they are, and to why Amsterdam will forever be linked with pornography. All in all it was a fantastic way to spend 3 hours, and even included things I didn’t even think of, such as going past the Amsterdam Hilton where John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged the infamous “love in” in 1969. The Hilton, in their infinite capitalist wisdom have left all of John and Yoko’s writing on the walls, and now charge 1700euro per night as the fee to stay in that room. After the bike tour, I had a much greater respect for Amsterdam as a city, and felt like I was beginning to understand the culture.

When we got back from the tour we went back to the hostel and caught up with a few of the friends from the night before and potted around on the internet. I went to walk away and nearly bumped into some girl who was just arriving. I said “I’m sorry”, she replied with “no worries mate”. I replied “Aussie” and that’s how I met Hannah. Renee, Nic, Hannah and I all went do to the supermarket and got some meat, cheese, bread rolls etc and went for a picnic in Vondel park. The place was packed. That’s another reason to love Europe in the summer. Everybody is outside enjoying the long hours of summer sun. Any area of grass or parkland is taken up by thousands of people, cooking little portable barbeques, playing soccer or just sunbaking.

We had planned to go out to a club called The Winston tonight for some drum and bass. We would be meeting the big British group out at the club for a bit of drum and bass mayhem. On the way in we went to the red light district to see the complete and utter weirdness that makes up this classless tourist institution. After walking through the streets of the red light district we went to the Winston. The drum and bass was good, but the club was ridiculously hot and you could really only stay in there comfortably for about 10 minutes at a time. After a few hours of this we walked back to the hostel. I got a message from Kate when she was back at the hostel and we went out for a chat and a walk around Vondel park.

The next morning I went out to meet Karianne for a coffee. I’d met her on the plane to Amsterdam a few days ago. She was missing her holiday, and I was able to tell her some of the cooler moments regarding mine. After coffee I did a canal cruise and took some obligatory tourist shots around Amsterdam.

Again we got some food at the supermarket and went down to Vondel park for a picnic again. I left the picnic early as I was meeting Louise, the Aussie beach volleyballer from Groningen, for a few drinks in Leidseplein. Louise played indoor volleyball at the Sydney Olympics, and as such has some absolutely amazing and hilarious stories (none of which I am liberty to share) about life on the Athletes village and at other pro sport events.

I got a reasonably early night on my last night in Amsterdam, being as I needed to be ready to leave on the bus the Berlin at 7:45am this morning. A few of the other crew hit it pretty hard, and as we sit on the bus today, they feel pretty worse for wear. Germany looks to be another beautiful country with rolling hills and picturesque towns. I can’t wait to see what Berlin has to offer.

Groningen / Assen TT

2009-06-28T07:44:00.000-07:00

Groningen / Assen TT

As I sit here and think what to write about my last 3 days in Groningen and Assen there’s really only one thing that springs to mind. It has been a struggle.
I know I’m not supposed to say that about a holiday, while all you people are busy at work, or worse, not busy at work. But I’ve come to believe that holidays are a certain amount of fun compared to a certain amount of pretending to have fun. We all know that holidays are supposed to be to most fun ever but I think that holidays can never be 100% fun all of the time, so we go through the motions. We take the photos. We smile. We pretend, until the next actual fun thing happens. So the cycle continues, obviously with varying levels in the fun/pretend fun ratio depending on the person, the company, and of course, the holiday.

This is not to say for a minute that I regret any of my decisions. I am glad I left London so quick. I am glad I went to the MotoGP and I am glad that I am here alone. These decisions were the best decisions to make, they were not, however, the funnest choices.

We should probably start at the beginning. I got into Groningen at about 10pm on Wednesday night. I had not map and no idea where my hostel was. I had the address on my email but had not thought to print it out ahead of time. There are two things that made this error not such a big deal. Firstly, the visitor information office, complete with internet, is open at the train station until 11pm. Secondly, there are only 2 hostels in Groningen and once I said “simplon”, the visitor information lady told me which bus to catch. So I went and waited for bus 11 at gate D. Bus 11 was already parked there and there were some people waiting around, but no bus driver. So I waited around also. The first thing that struck me about Groningen that night was that I was completely and utterly on my own for the first time in my life. The second thing that struck me is that didn’t bother me too much, in fact, it excited me. The third thing that struck me is the sheer number of bicycles in this place. Everybody is riding a bicycle. They are parked everywhere, near the train station alone there would have been about 3000 of them. And people are still riding them around at 10:30pm on a Wednesday night.

The bus driver walked up the bus, got in and closed the door behind him. No one moved, so I didn’t move. He pottered around inside the bus. He stared the engine. No one moved, so I didn’t move. He drove away. At this point I am thinking “Is is a bad way to start my solo travels by running down the street after a bus crying for it to not leave without me and that I don’t know where I am”. But, no one moved, so I didn’t move. And, to my great pleasure, I had forgotten that in Europe cars drive on the right. It had done a U-turn out of the parking lot to pick us up on the road at the bus stop and facing the correct way. Step 1, complete.

The bus driver had to drop me off at Boterdiep. I had asked him to let me know when it was and had hence sat up near the front of the bus. I knew simplon was on boterdiep, but had no idea of how far along the street it was. Once out of the bus I walked up and down the street twice before I saw the vertical cursive neopn sign that signified the entrance to the hostel.

This hostel is, hmmm. I have no other hostels to compare it to, but I met up with some Irish lads the next night who had hostel’d it all the way through Europe for the last two months, and this was apparently the worst that had stayed in.

So I’m in a shitty hostel, but at least I have a bed. And once I put my earplugs in to block the noise of the dude two bunks over who has apparently shoved a V8 up his nose and it redlines every time he breathes, I get right to sleep.

I wake up very early as I am still running pretty much on Perth time, but that’s okay as it gives me a nice early start to go out and explore the city. Groningen is beautiful. It’s kinda like you would expect the creepy storybook villages of silent hill (it a video game for the non-nerds) to be if nothing creepy ever happened and they just continued in the new millennium. There is definitely modernisation, but the little cobblestoned streets and old churches and other buildings remind you of a time that Perth has never heard of.

I walked around Groningen all morning, taking photos of the typical touristy things and generally just being amazed with all of it. There was a few tones of beach sand in the town square, which had been set up for the national volley ball tournament which was coming to town on the weekend. There were people everywhere riding bicycles to work and I nearly got cleaned up a few times, due to me looking the wrong way, and them being so damn silent. I went back to the hostel at about 11:30am and got my stuff to head out to Assen to go to the first session of the MotoGP.

Getting to the circuit was really easy, however it was quite expensive. A return ticket to Assen was nearly 10 euro, and the return ticket to the track was 5 euro. I guess it’s not too bad. I must stop converting back to AUD. I got a seat in the main straight and sat down to wait for the show. Two things struck me. Firstly, the bikes are freaking loud, even the little ones. When they are at full noise on the main straight if you don’t have ear plugs in you actually get distortion, like when you play drum and bass too loud through crap speakers. Secondly, MotoGP, though it may look classy on tv is just a big piss up for the boys. They usually have a road trip where they ride here from all over Europe, they camp and they get drunk for three days, then they go home. This all sounds like a barrel of fun, but it definitely made me wish that my boys were here with me.

On the way back to Groningen from the track I had a look around Assen. It is also a gorgeous little town, with canals and cute streets filled with old buildings. It’s is also full of middle aged drunk Poms, which has its own sort of amusement. The TT festival is on in Assen over the time the MotoGP races are on, and while I’d heard there was a street party, I did not expect it to be this big. Five stages with different music and about fifteen different bars set up around the town make this the biggest street party I’ve ever seen.

I came back to the hostel and started chatting to two Irish lads who had got in during the day. They had slept the previous night at a train station on their way to Groningen, as they were on the last train somewhere hoping to get a connecting train to Groningen, but had no luck and ended up sleeping on the ground. Not the funnest night of their lives, but a story all the same. We went down to the supermarket to get some cheap food for dinner and then sat outside with these two Polish guys who were trying to get work here. They didn’t speak Dutch, and were quite amazed to find out that even for jobs such as peeling shrimp, their lack of the local language would prevent them from getting work.

The next day I was out to Assen quite early for two sessions of MotoGP action. While walking to the Groningen train station, I was passed by an old dude on a segway, as I was still laughing to myself about this I walked past a street where a young woman was sitting on a strep, she saw me laughing and smiled back. It was a nice way to start the day.

At Assen I chatted with a few old Dutch dudes as I couldn’t understand the announcer and wanted to know who was winning. They were quite friendly and gave me one of their dried meat things to eat, then were on their way. I walked the entire way round the track to check out all the different areas as tomorrow would be restricted seating and I wanted to see all of it while I could. Rossi ened up getting pole position, which made the crowd very happy and I think he would have had close to 100% support here.

Back in Groningen that evening, while walking back from the train station I found myself on the street where the girl who smiled at me was sitting and soon realized it was the red light district as women where seating at the window in their underwear. It’s quite startling when you’re not ready for it. There goes my confidence boost… The only Dutch woman prepared to smile at me is paid to do so. Awesome. It’s such a strange concept though, the women sitting at the window. Some of them are having cups of tea, reading the paper, watching the Simpsons. All the while nearly naked and in full view of the street.

That night both the Irish and Polish boys had moved on and I was now set with the task of making new friends. Here’s where the struggle really comes. I realized that there are two types of people at my hostel. The middle aged English lads whom I have a bit in common with, but am unlikely to go out for a night on the piss with. And the guys that are my age, but are there solely to get stoned the whole time, and do not desire a night on the piss, anymore than I desire to get stoned with people I don’t know in a country I don’t understand. I have lived my whole life with the motto “Fuck ‘em, I’ve got enough friends”. I now realize that this motto needs to change, and change fast. While I lamented this while walking around the city in the fading light of ten pm, I decided that this trip is not a holiday. At least not a holiday in the sense that Japan with Woo was a holiday where we were going out every night and getting written off, but really learning little about the people, the place, our fellow travelers, or more importantly, ourselves. This trip in contrast would not be about the big nights I would have (although I’m sure there will be some) but it will be how I deal with the moments of loneliness that may stretch into days, and the inevitable personal growth that comes with that.

I did however meet two Australian girls who were in Groningen to play in the Volleyball tournament. Alice and Louise are at the institute of sport and checked in at around the same time as the hostel worker was asking me if I was some kind of computer whiz kid and could fix their internet connection even though all the error messages are in Dutch and despite my mega computer skills, I would have little chance of understanding the problem.

He next morning was race day and again I was out at the track early. It was nuts. People were everywhere (mostly wearing yellow, in honour of Rossi, their god). The 125cc and 250cc races were exciting, tight struggles that were great fun to watch. The main race however was a bit of a precession as Rossi won by miles. Stoner got third and I was a little disappointed. I at least wanted it to be close. Oh well, I was there the day Rossi won his 100th race. That’s a little bit of history at least.

I went back to Groningen that night and went out to the town square and had some dinner. A WEINERSCHNITZEL (sorry, I have decided that anything that sounds the slightest bit German must be yelled) was quite cheap at around 10 euro. It was nice to have a good meal and be in the centre of town, even if it was all by myself (cue music from Bridget Jones). I had heard there was an ice bar in the town centre area and was determined to have a drink there before the end of the night. I spent the time waiting for the bar to open by walking around the city that I had not yet explored and at around 10pm made my way back to the town square. The ice bar was awesome. And cold. Duh. After a shot of vodka (I figured it was appropriate) and a shot of Jager for good measure, I made my way back to the hostel and got some sleep.

The next morning I got up and went down to the town square to watch Louise and Alice give some Dutch girls a lesson in Beach Volleyball. I wore my wife-beater to add that classic Aussie touch. Then it was farewell to beautiful Groningen and time to get Amsterdamned.

The train ride there was pleasant enough. Once there I went to the tourist office to get directions to my hostel, and after the tram let me out a stop late, it was only a hop skip and a jump to the Flying Pig Uptown hostel. There are already more people my age (and by that I mean UNDER 30) in this hostel than I came across in all my time in Groningen. And there’s a big party tonight. It’s all looking up. Taylor needs some friends.

London – Some time on my own

2009-06-25T01:18:00.001-07:00

Monday I headed out into London town with a few things to do. Originally I was going to go to Wimbledon with Marnie, but she had gone too hard on Saturday night and was not in any state to watch tennis all day. We would’ve struggled to get tickets anyway, so it turned out to be a good thing we didn’t go.

I needed a UK simcard, an Australia to Europe/UK adaptor and some security netting for luggage that Belle has apparently seen, but I’ve not seen before or after. I got the train into Charing Cross station and decided to walk to Oxford street without consulting a map, being as navigation is apparently so difficult in London. As I was born with an innate sense of direction (anyone know which awesome animated movie this quote is from?), this jaunt through the most touristy area of London proved to be quite simple, apart from slow walking tourists irritating me. I got my simcard and was now once again connected to the world of reasonable priced sms. I couldn’t find anywhere that sold the luggage netting stuff, not could I find the Aus to UK Euro adaptor I was looking for, but continued to walk around Oxford Street for a while.

After I grew tired of Oxford Street and the tourist fueled irritation I got on the tube and went down to Westminster for more tourist related madness. I came up from the underground right in front of Big Ben and then took quite a few touristy shots from Westminster Bridge. I stood on the bridge for a few minutes, one of the most tourist heavy places in the world and watched all of them take photos of each other with Westminster Abbey and Big Ben in the background. I was one of them, but it was not the photos that were important to me. It was just the fact that I was finally here. It had taken nearly seven years from the time I decided to come, to actually getting here, and most of the delays were my own doing, but I was finally here, and that felt satisfying.

I then walked along the Thames back towards Trafalgar Square. Along the way there are many war memorials to the various armed forces that battled in the first and second world wars. I like the Air Force memorial for those that died in the Battle of Britain the best. It’s not a high monument, similar to the Bali monument in Kings Park in a lot of ways, but has 3D sculptures of various war moments cast in bronze coming out of the side of the walls.

When I got back to Trafalgar Square, I decided in would be a dereliction of my duties as a tourist if I did not go to Buckingham palace. So I trekked down to the palace and walked around the gates out the front, taking photos as is the tourist way. At the Australia gate I took some photos and was very surprised to notice that the statue at the top looks to be a child hugging a kangaroo. Not what I’d expected. I then decided that I’d been a tourist long enough for today and headed back to Greenwich to have dinner with Jax and Belle.

The next day I had my only appointment of the time in England, and that was at the local job centre in order to get my National Insurance Number. I left later that I wanted to, but still got to Stepney on time for my interview. All went well with that, and I set out to do more exploring around London.

From Stepney I walked into the city. There is a habit of many people, including nearly all Londoners, to use the tube all the time, even though it might only be a ten minute walk. I like to walk, it’s exercise (I already feel weird having not been to a gym in over two weeks) and you get to see where everything is in relation to each other, rather than just popping out of a hole in the ground in front of it. Also, I could see the Gherkin in the distance and wanted to know if that was indeed the buildings official name, as Belinda had told me. To my surprise, it was. It is officially called “The Gherkin Tower”. It does look like a gherkin, so I guess it makes sense.

I then walked around the Tower of London for more snaps, and then made my way into Chinatown for a quick bite at a place that claimed to be the Dumpling King. The dumplings were excellent (they’d want to be for 5 pounds for 7 dumplings) but, alas, this was not the king. I’ve had better.

I continued on my way through Soho to the Borders, were I pulled up a chair and read through some travel books about The Netherlands. It was soon 2pm and time for me to have lunch with Jax and Bruce. It was great to see Bruce again, he’s always a cheerful fellow, and I won’t see him again for a while as he’s heading back to Perth before I get back from Europe. Jax, Bruce and I had a good chat before everyone’s lunch break was over and it was time to leave, as I had to get back to Greenwich to let Belle in after work.

I packed up all my stuff for the trip to Holland tomorrow and then headed out to meet Dima in Clapham for a few drinks. Dima did the typical bar hopping thing as Johnno, Scotty, Dima and I went had one beer at each bar before we moved on to another. It was a fun night with the boys, and I really like Clapham. It’s likely to be the suburb I’ll live in if I don’t get a job on the snow, and come back to settle in London. I made it home at just before midnight after sprinting for the train from Waterloo to Waterloo east train station. I think I may have pulled a hammie, but I’m sure I’ll survive.

I woke up the next morning with a slight hangover. I’ve really gotta get used to that, as I assume it’s only gonna get worse over the next 3 months of travelling around Europe. I went to work with Belle as this was the only way for her to have her keys. I left my bags at her work in Edgeware road and set off on a completely random morning around London before I went to Heathrow around noon. I jumped on a train without looking where it was going and decided to get off at the next stop that sounded interesting. That stop happened to be Notting Hill. Holy Jeebus, there is some money in that suburb. The place is gorgeous, but also has a fairly stuffy feel to it. I walked further through notting Hill to check out the Portobello Road market, which was pretty dead, but it was 10am on a Wednesday morning.

I then got back on the subway and went to Waterloo train station to check out some graffiti art Belle had recommended. There wasn’t much left of it, as it’s in a tunnel where graffiti is legal, so all the taggers had come in and gone over the top of the cool stuff with their useless and ugly tags. I then went back to Edgeware road, picked up my bags and took the first steps of my solo adventure through Europe.

Upon arrival to Heathrow, after checking in my bags, I learned two things about myself very quickly. I trust people too easy, and I have a habit of getting fleeced by a pretty girl trying to sell me stuff I don’t need. The first was after I was in a luggage store in the Airport, before you go through security. She told me no other shops in the airport would have the adaptor I was looking for, hence I bought a straight Euro adaptor off her. Only to walk through security and find a large electronics shop with every kind of adaptor I could need. Grrr
Secondly, there were some smoking hot cars on display and I went to take some photos of them. The cute sales girl started talking me into buying a raffle ticket and even though I didn’t want one and I needed that money, I still ended up buying one. I am a tool.

I got on the plane, and straight away started talking to the woman next to me who is one her way home to Amsterdam after 4 months travelling in Australia. She found it very amusing that I was about to do in her country what she had just finished doing in mine. We chatted the whole way to Amsterdam, which was the shortest flight of my life. I couldn’t believe it. We’d barely got to cruising altitude when the pilot was telling us to prepare for our descent. All those years flying into and out of Perth have made me forget that flights that last for less than one hour actually exist. I was in line for security longer than I was on the plane!

I write this now sitting on the train to Groningen. The Dutch countryside reminds me a lot of Victoria (when it rains). It is very flat and very green, with the occasional typical Dutch windmill thrown in to remind me of where I am. Its 9pm and still blazing sunlight. I won’t get to my hostel till after 9:30pm. I hope they haven’t given my bed away.

London – The Arrival

2009-06-22T01:50:00.000-07:00

Belle arrived at Heathrow to pick me up just after 8:30am and we made our long and complicated way back to Greenwich. It was all a little complicated as I had no idea where we were, which way we were going or how far from our destination we were. By far the coolest thing was leaving Charing Cross station on the overland and going out over the river Thames with Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and the London Eye all right there. Before that it was all subways and noise and people, but going over that bridge, it finally felt like I was in London.

Upon arrival at Belle’s flat, we pottered around for a few hours before heading out to look around Greenwich. It’s a nice little area, kinda like Mount Lawley as far as demographic goes, I think. We went up to the prime meridian, where I got a photo of me looking at all the tourists waiting in line to get a photo on the line that marks 0’0” on the longitudinal. I was not prepared to wait in line for that photo. We walked through Greenwich markets where there was heaps of really cool art and if I was settling here, there is definitely some stuff I would buy for my apartment.

After walking around most of Greenwich we went into the Gipsy Moth, a very cool pub in Greenwich that reminds me a lot of the Brisbane. We stayed there for a few pints before making our way home.

I was desperately trying to remain awake at this stage, as I didn’t want to go to bed too early and let my body clock wake me up too early. It still looked like about 5pm outside but upon looking at the clock I realized it was 9pm, and I promptly went to bed.

The next morning Belle and I got out of the house at a little before 11am and went to catch the train, however it was not servicing Greenwich that day, as there were track works going on. Belle decided we should cat the ‘clipper’ which is the ferry that goes along the Thames into central London. It was a nice ride and we got to see a lot of the landmarks such as Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.

We got off the ferry at the London Eye and walked back along southbank and crossed the river to get to Trafalgar Square, where I got the obligatory tourist photo, then into Chinatown and Soho for more touristy type stuff before making our way to Covent Garden to go to the Porterhouse where my “Welcome to the UK” drinks had been booked.

Some people were sick and some couldn’t make it, but it was great to see Scotty, Dimma and Teja again. It turns out Scott lives the next suburb over from Belle so I might get to catch up with him for a while before I go. We drank there for a few hours and then made our way through Covent Garden to another pub for another drink before we all went our separate directions.

Upon arrival back in Greenwich we met Jax for some noodles at the local noodle house and chatted about what she has been up to. She works for the football association here in London, which apparently I already knew, although I don’t remember knowing. A job with perks such as tickets to the FA cup sounds like something I would normally remember.

London has been quite overwhelming, with so much to process, and that is even with someone to show me around and prevent me from getting lost. It makes me a little scared as to how I’ll be in countries where English is not the dominant language and I don’t have a guide and I just have to wing it all on my own. I know it will be a challenge, but I wouldn’t have left Perth if I didn’t want to do something difficult.

By far the most difficult thing however, has been being around Belle and not being with Belle. I know that I had seriously underestimated how much this would affect me, and while this is not the forum I wish to discuss the complexities of this situation, suffice to say that as much as travelling around the European continent on my own will be hugely challenging and amazing, I am looking forward to it as a way to get my mind off Belinda as much as anything else.

Two more days in London town, which will likely consist of getting lost many times and cracking the shits at stupid tourists…

Singapore – The Exodus

2009-06-20T04:53:00.000-07:00

Waking up boiling in the morning sun as I lay in a pool of my own sweat on Thursday morning, two things occurred to me. Firstly, I should make more of an effort to ensure the curtains are closed before I go to sleep. Secondly, Crispian’s air conditioner had stopped working. Hence, I got up, had a cold shower and watched some television.

A few hours later, Crispy awoke and we decided to go out for brunch. It was 2pm, but Crispy still preferred to refer to it as brunch. We met Sheue Yng there and afterwards she came back to Crispy’s house with us before we went out again.

Tonight would not be a repeat of last night. Crispy had very little money and I was happy to go to a restaurant where the total bill would be under $100. We went out for hawker food in Geylang, which is the red light district of Singapore. The food was mostly street vendors and hawker stalls, which is fine by me as they are the best food anyway, they’re mighty cheap.
We had a fantastic meal, the entirety of which was less that my share of the meal the night before, and then set out to stalk the mean street of Singapore. Luckily, the gorgeous Sheue Yng had the protection of Crispian and I. it’s not really any different to a red light district in any other country. The thing that struck me the most is the huge amount of hotels. There is a hotel chain called “Hotel 81” with charges $10 per hour for a room. They are everywhere. Usually two every block, which I thought was completely excessive as we are talking about 40 – 60 rooms per hotel. However Crispy made the point that it’s not just for the prostitutes, many couples use them for premarital sex, so as not to let their parents know what’s going on. I just used the back seat/ front seat/ boot/ bonnet of the car myself, but whatever works I guess…

We didn’t stay there that longs, because just like the shops, if you’re not actually planning on purchasing anything, it’s kind of retarded to continue looking at the product. We went home and had a fairly early night.

The next morning I woke up with plans to go to the gym, go for a swim, get packed up and leave the sweltering heat of Singapore behind me. I took things fairly easy in the morning and when I was about to head out to the gym, the heavens opened and it rained heavily for about an hour. I then took the short walk to the gym, which I found out was closed for renovations, so I went to the pool. It was really only a lap pool, and I was more going to cool down rather than exercise, but I figured as I didn’t go to the gym I should get some exercise. I swam a few laps in the warm water and realized that I was hotter now than before I got in. Apparently I am not suited to living in the tropics. I guess it’s a good thing that I am expecting to be spending much of my time on the snow over the next period of my life.

I went to the shops to grab a bite to eat and I thought I’d pick up some expectorant/decongestant to try to clear my chest and reduce my chances of being quarantined upon my entry to the UK. I asked the lady wearing the white coat in the pharmacy, and she replied that she would just ask the pharmacist. I thought she was the pharmacist, but whatever. She then gets on the computer and starts a video call with someone in another location. She then asks me to come and speak to the screen. I am now standing in a pharmacy in Bishan, speaking into a microphone, looking at my own face and that of the pharmacist on the screen. I say that I just want some expectorant and she asks me to speak louder. Her words come through via standard computer speakers next to the screen. So I am now effectively yelling my request into a screen at a crowded chemist, and all I can think is how glad I am that am not asking for something embarrassing such as treatment for genital warts or the like. She eventually says that she’s going to prescribe some Dimetapp, or similar and I finally get what I want and make my exit.

As it was my last day in Singapore, I decided to take one last wander around the shopping centre. On the top floor I find a hair dresser. As I walk past, having no intention of getting my hair cut, I notice that you get a haircut by placing your money into a machine, which then gives you a token, which you then give to the hairdresser to get your hair cut. I decide this is a little different and I might as well have a crack. I pay my money, I wait in the seat numbered 1 as I am then next in line for a cut. People not waiting for a cut themselves must wait outside, so that prospective patrons do not get an excessive idea of the wait time for a haircut. I know this because of the clearly displayed rules on the hairdresser wall.

The kid getting his haircut in front of me finished, and the hairdresser swept all his hair into a corner where she then flicked a switch and a vacuum sucked all the hair from the corner. She than asked me to sit, opened the mirror to reveal a storage space for me to place my bag, and I sat down for my hair cut. She was very precise, and quite fast. There was no chit chat, and she did not try to sell me a tub of wax for $50 when she had finished. She simply vacuumed my head and sent me on my way. I wish haircuts in Australia were more like this.

I arrived home, packed up all my stuff (forgetting my $160 worth of Vitamins, a fact I would not realize till somewhere over Turkey) and waited for Crispy to return home. Crispy, Rae and I all went to the airport to meet up with Sheue Yng, who was also flying out to Paris that night. We met in terminal 2, which Crispy mistakenly thought was the terminal he had picked me up from 4 days earlier. We then went to terminal 1 so I could check in my bag, and we all ate dinner together. I tried Popeye’s chicken. It was not as impressive as Chris Tucker would have led me to believe. We then dropped Sheue Yng off at Terminal 3, only after I got some photos of myself with the lovely lady in her Singapore Airlines uniform.

So, our unintentional tour of all terminals of Changi airport completed, we all walked to the furthest section of Terminal 3 to get a coffee and have a chat. The chat mostly consisting of me being unable to understand why Crispian didn’t absolutely love Terminator: Salvation. We may have taken that conversation a little too seriously as I realized my plane was boarding and we were possibly as far away from my gate as we could be. It all worked up though as I got to the gate, arriving just as my section of seats was being asked to be seated and found my seat next to a middle aged balding man. It seems that invisible sign that asks for me to never be seated next to an attractive female is still attached to my head.

The trip itself was brilliant. I slept for about 7 hours and had no major dramas. The only thing of any real note was that I was listening to my iPod as we were coming down for landing and LES Artistes by Santigold came on. The main line of the chorus seemed very fitting, “I can say I hope it will be worth what I gave up”.

I now sit inside terminal 4 at Heathrow airport, having just eaten my first meal on British soil in over 20 years (and cinnamon scroll and a mocha from Starbucks for anyone that’s interested) as I now wait for Belinda to get here and guide me back to Greenwich, where the 2nd stop on the Taylorpalooza World Tour begins.

Laters

Singapore nightlife....

2009-06-17T19:06:00.000-07:00

Crispy and I went out for dinner at Boat Quay where we met Steve Wiley and was had some dinner. After we had eaten the regular (with Crispy at least) Singaporean shisha came out, so that was smoked for a while before we headed off the the Butter Factory.

Crispy was very excited to be showing me the Butter factory. It was part of his "move to Singapore" theme of good food, hot girls and clean clubs. But what we saw at Butter Factory stopped us all in our tracks...

In this shot you cant see the whole queue. It gets down to the river and then goes along the river to the right for about another 50m. This is at 10:30pm on a Wednesday night. We went and had a drink at the bar next door called Overeasy. Beers were $13 for a stubby. Cocktails were $16 so we decided to go a Long Island iced tea. When paying I realised that the slap the GST and service fee on top of the list price so they ended up being about $20 each. It was probably the strongest long island iced tea ever though. The dash of lemon juice would have been the only non-alcoholic thing in it!

After watching the line for Butter Factory for about 40min and it not moving an inch, Crispy called a friend of his who could get us in the VIP line, but wasn't planning on getting to Butter Factory for a while. She was at a club in Clarke Quay called Cuba Libre, where we decided to join her as there was some cool Brazillian style drumming going on and they had 2 for 1 Mojitos.

Clarke Quay is probably to most touristy nightspot in Singapore, and it was packed. We met some of Crispys other friends at Cuba Libre and tucked into the mojitos ($18 for 2). After the drumming and being well on our way to hammered at 1am, we decided to flag off Butter Factory and go to another club in Robertson Quay called "dbl 0".

Dbl 0 was a total spin out. We walked up the stairs into a room with a bar in the centre and some cover band bastardising Oasis. After walking through that room, we went past a clothes shop. Yes. A clothes shop. In a night club. Then a long corridor led into the nightclub area filled will singaporeans jumping around to truly horrible house music. Along the corridor was a long class cage similar to that in silence of the lambs, which held about 20 smokers. Like Australia there is no smoking in the clubs and this means they dont need to go outside. It's a little surreal to view it, as it's almost like a performance piece in it's own little space.

After having our free drink that we got with our $30 entry fee, we went downstairs to 'O bar", where you could get a jug of mix (ie bourbon and coke) for $14. and they dont skimp out on the pours either. Crispy and I were already hammered so this was now becoming a slippery slope to completely nailed. We met up with Crispian's girlfriend, Sheue Yng, and some of her friends at O bar and continued the drinking. We stayed at O bar until about 3am when we caught a taxi down to Zook, a club that Crispy had regularly talked about, especially their once a year outdoor beach party "Zookout".

We got out of the taxi in front of Zook and I nearly got into a fight. I dont remember it all that clearly, but some fat wasted white dude was being a fuckwit, so I pushed him off. A security guard then took him away and we walked off. About 20m down the road he started running back towards me as the security guard had let him go. I turned to face him and he stopped about 5m away from me. He asked what I wanted to do about it. I didn't (and still dont) understand this question, but replied with something along the lines of "I want you to walk away". At this point a security guard started ushering me away, and the one that had walked fatso off before came back for a second time to get rid of him.

It was nearly closing time at Zook so we didn't need to pay. It seemed like a pretty cool club, although the music on wednesday was all 80's and 90's pop hits. Not exactly my cup of tea, but the funny thing about it is that they pretty much play the same songs every week. every song has a dance that goes with it. This dance is available to view on youtube, so pretty much all the punters all know the dance moves, so you have a club full of people all doing the same dance moves! It's like watching a really drunk, full rock esteidford. (that might be a NSW thing....)

We then went upstairs to phuture bar, which was PACKED. It seemed like a really well set up club with walls of l.e.d's making for a very cool visual effect, but we had as much room to dance as one would have on a Tokyo train at peak hour, so we soon decided to bust a move and go get some food.

We walked about a km or two to a little restaurant that was full of people at 4:30am. The food was fantastic (mmmmmm roti canai) and very cheap. And after we ate we jumped a taxi and went home. Still drunk, but very full and quite tired.

Things I learned about myself today:

I do stupid things when drunk. I asked Crispy if he thought I could make it across the 3 lane road and back before the oncoming traffic would reach me. It was about 200m away at the time. For the record, yes I made it. Just. And deservedly got tooted by about 15 cars.

Budgeting while drunk is not a skill I have mastered. I started out the night wanting to spend $150. We'd only just got to the second club of the night and I was already taking out another $200.

Thats all for now. Today has been a much quieter day, filled with a lot of food and a lot of sleep.

Taylorpalooza - World Tour

2009-06-16T03:22:00.000-07:00

Well I have now been away from Perth for just over 24 hours. What could have possibly happened in that time?

Plane delayed for over an hour. Not the largest problem in the world, but it was made worse by the couple sitting next to me that couldn't stop making out and were making slappy smacky kissy noses the whole time.... grrr

Once on the plane it all went pretty quick. I watched The Watchmen (which was awesome) and a few episodes of family guy and viola, I'm in Singapore!

After going through the swine flu heat cameras and acting as relaxed as possible I was out of customs, buying a bottle of duty free vodka as tax for Crispy's housemates for my accommodation and out the doors to find Crispian waiting with a can of beer for me. Awesome.

We taxied back to Crispians flat and when I got out of the taxi at about 10:30pm, it was still at least 30'.

After meeting crispy's housemates, and having a chat the Chan man, he needed to go to sleep so I retired also.

Upon waking up, I decided to make myself some breakfast and I accidentally exploded an egg in crispy's microwave. Awesome.

After cleaning up the egg I sat down and with my first morning of my world tour, I did my TAX. Oh joy. That took about 3 hours. Oh well, it needed to be done. At least now I wont be sitting in an Internet cafe in Germany, surrounded by receipts!

The tax sorted, I had a shower and headed out into Singapore to catch the train to the the shopping mecca of Orchard rd.

I got some lunch at a food court near the train station, whose banner said "It's chow time now! In the basement" hmmm.... Why does that make me think of Josef Fritzl?

I bought my food at sat down at what I thought was the common area of the food court, but after being told off for eating my food there I realised that it was dedicated seating to the establishment nearest. And where I bought my food had no seating at all. So, I packed my food up, and went outside and sat on the steps. At least the crispy chicken rice was excellent and only $4.50. Yum.

Orchard Road is like St Georges terrace if you bulldozed everything that's there and replaced every single building with a giant shopping mall. Which normally, would be quite fun, but I'm already right on my weight limit for baggage to get to the UK so i cant buy a thing. I spent most of the time just walking around and window shopping. I found a pair of red tigers that I'm pretty sure Woo would cream his pants over, and he's always wanted red shoes, and he loves tigers. but who knows. Maybe after the red shoe issues in Japan he's now over that...

I found this advertisement for the new burger king burger. Do you get the not so subliminal message?

A random sign/poster on a wall. It seems a little bit Nazi to me?? Dance muthafuka, Dance!!

I then spent a few hours in Borders, reading the lonely planet guides for Austria, Germany and Czech republic. I'm looking forward to going there even more now, and have a few more ideas of things that I want to check out.

Things I have learned about myself today;

I should pay attention to how I am walking. I tend to drag my feet. Today that resulted in me tripping up stairs and tripping up an escalator.

I would drop stupid amounts of cash if i lived here and had money. I found a pair of Nixon headphones that I would have happily paid the $250 for if I hadn't bought a pair of sennheisers a week ago.

I still LOVE Asian women. Dammit. Crispy keeps telling me to flag off Europe and move to Singapore. He might have a point. hmmmm...

Anyway, that's all for now. Catch you on the flipside.

Bridgetown Day 2: The ride back

2009-04-08T06:59:00.000-07:00

I got up on Sunday morning a fair bit earlier than the couples. I contemplated taking the bike out on my own and going for a ride, but my glutes and legs were still quite sore, and I had a 350km journey home later in the day to ready myself for, so I decided to just have a cup of tea and read my book.

After a few hours the couples woke up and we cooked up and big breakfast. We then packed up the house and headed out to Manjimup to go to the truffle farm. On leaving the house I did a giant burnout in the driveway, the was so much smoke it looked like the house was on fire as we rode away.

We blasted down the 35kms to Manjimup. As we went through a little town, there were some cops behind some bushes near the road, but we spotted them in time and had no issues. We arrived at the truffle farm a few minutes before the girls and we then tasted some wine and purchased some truffle related stuff.

We then planned to go back to Bridgetown to go to the Cidery. On the way back we were taking it easy as we knew the cops were there. As Billy and I were plodding along at 110kmh in a 110kmh zone, they went past us. Nate was about 150m back and when the cops pulled him over they said he was doing 124kmh, which is bullshit, but they were being dicks as usual. So Nate met up with us at the petrol station and he was not at all impressed that he had lost 2 points and his wallet would be $150 lighter.

We sampled a few beers and ciders at the cidery in Bridgetown before heading off to meet in Harvey. Nate was cranky after the police incident and wanted to get moving. The cops had said that they couldn’t bust Me and Billy for speeding as we were too close together and the laser wouldn’t pick out a specific target, hence we rode in tight formation, with about 5m separating first from third, travelling at about 150kmh the whole way. It was a boring road, and not terribly quick as we were riding so close to each other. But it was still awesome fun as it requires so much trust between the three of us. Usually the second rider can see very little, but they know that if the leader goes, you follow. Everybody is aware of where the others will be and you just ride to your spot.

After getting a quick feed with the girls in Harvey, we continued home in formation until I split off from the guys to head home via the freeway.

When I got home my bike was filthy, my legs were killing me and I was happy to sit on the couch in the theatre and watch World Superbikes all night.

Bridgetown Day 1 : The ride there

2009-04-08T06:57:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning Nate, Billy and myself were planning to head down to Bridgetown on the bikes. Sue and Sarah were driving down with our stuff and would meet us at the house we had rented for the night just outside Bridgetown.

Tony Chung had decided to come along for the first part of the ride to Dwellingup on his new CBR600RR (even though he cannot legally ride it yet). We got out of town late, as was expected and blasted down to Byford along Tonkin hwy. After Byford, Tony had to stop as he thought he needed fuel, unfortunately he doesn’t know how to work a petrol pump and was walking back and forth into and out of the petrol station thinking they had run out of fuel.

Eventually we got back on the road and headed along Del Park road to Dwellingup. It’s a fantastic run with a great surface and long sweeping corners that go 180 degrees. It was mad fun and we all arrived in Dwellingup with big smiles on our faces. We stopped for some food and then bid Tony farewell as he headed back to Perth and we continued our journey.

This is where things started to go wrong. We turned off at the road for Williams but then got confused and thought we’d turned off too early. We then backtracked and went another 30kms along some excellent roads. Unfortunately it got us to Albany hwy, which was about 50kms in the opposite direction as to where we wanted to be. We ripped along Albany hwy to Williams averaging about 230kmh. It was good fun, although the road was a little boring and we were beginning to get a little sore. We filled up in Williams and then got on the Williams-Collie road and headed for Collie.

There were some roadworks along the way but nothing to tragic. Overall it was a fantastic road and Nate led at an excellent pace as we averaged about 170kmh through some brilliant country twisties.

We hit more problems when we got to Collie, as we were expecting a sign that told us which way to go for Donnybrook, but there was none. We picked what we thought was the right road and set off. All was going well, the road was fun and in good condition, running through the Wellington Forest. Unfortunately the road soon went unsealed and the three of us plodded along the dirt road at about 40kmh for around 20kms. Nate and Billy amused themselves by trying to do rolling burnouts on the dirt and get their bikes sideways, however they mostly just succeeded in sending rocks and dust in my direction. After what seemed like forever we finally returned to a sealed road and continued out to Dardanup and then Donnybrook.

We stopped in Donnybrook for fuel and sat down for a bit. The half hour on the dirt track had really taken it out of us and we were getting frail, both physically and mentally.

We set off to do the “triangle” which is the main reason we had come all this way. There is a triangle of roads connecting Balingup, Nannup and Bridgetown that run through the forest and are tristy and brilliant. I wanted to ride them before I left Perth. The ride from Donnybrook to Balingup was fine, and then we set along the first side of the triangle. It was tight, twisty and bumpy as fuck. Not exactly what we were looking for after nearly 5 hours on a sport bike. We got to Nannup and started the second side of the triangle towards Bridgetown along the Brockman hwy. This road was heaps better and would have been an absolute blast if we all weren’t so shagged by this stage. We got into Bridgetown and got off our bikes and nate had a conniption as he’s was tired and cranky and needed a cuddle. We called the girls, who were shitty at us as it was now 5pm and they’d been at the house since 1:30 waiting for us. We got directions to the house, however there was a miscommunication between Nate and Sue on the phone, so again we rode about 10kms further than we needed to, including turning into the correct driveway, deciding it was wrong and then leaving as the girls were waving there arms and screaming at us from the house as we rode away.

Finally we got to the house. Got off the bikes and endured the girls cutting sick at us as we all took off our bug and dust encrusted leathers, boots, gloves and helmets. Nate and Billy attempted to comfort their women, while I lay down on the grass and looked up at the evening country sky, very sore. But also very contented with what I had accomplished. This was a real country ride. I was proud that it was long. I was proud that I was sore. I felt like I had a little tiny snack size serving of “the long way round”.

After having a shower and getting our shit together we all went out in Bridgetown for dinner, and laughed about all the stupid shit that had happened to us along the way.

We planned to get smashed that evening, but everyone was so shagged after the day that we sat around drinking and watching Sydney beat Hawthorn in the footy. Sue and Billy fell asleep on the couch and the rest of us headed to bed soon after.

Melbourne Day 8: The last day

2009-04-03T07:45:00.000-07:00

I started my last day in Melbourne by getting stuck in traffic, roadworks and closed roads in my attempt to drive to the St Kilda Fitness First. After taking 35min on what should have been a 15min drive, I did my workout and grabbed a boost juice for myself and Jana on the way home.

We were meeting Alex for lunch in Carlton, in her break from Uni. Jana ,Alex and I all used to live together in Highgate about 7 years ago. It was a bit surreal to be together again as we’ve all changed so much, and yet we’re still the same. We reminisced about giant after parties where the power was out and cops were still called due to noise complaints, photos taken while people were unaware and making furniture out of milk crates.

Alex went back to uni and we went to Toorak. Jana had some stuff to do so I wandered around for a while. I found a shirt that sold some really awesome t-shirts, but the last thing I need is more t-shirts. So much so, that after looking at one shirt. I said “no” out loud and immediately walked out of the shop.

After that I took Jana back to Port Melbourne. Along the way I realised that I am actually really contented at the moment. Not because of where I am, but because of where I will be. I am really looking forward to the trip. It is really the only thing keeping me awake in any way. I have also made the decision that when I come back from Overseas, I will definitely be moving to Melbourne. I think this is what makes me happy. I love Melbourne, so even if all my plans overseas fall flat on their ass, I’m still gonna end up somewhere I love, with people I love. It’s a nice feeling to realise you are totally happy with your safety net. I think if I was coming back to Perth I’d feel a lot more stressed, because if Europe didn’t work out, I’d be coming back to the job and habits that I am trying to change.

After dropping Jana off in Port Melbourne I drove out to the airport and killed time before Trent, Tess and Cooper arrived. We all got on the plane and, to my surprise, Cooper was really well behaved.

All in all, I had a fantastic time in Melbourne. I know the blog for Melbourne was nowhere near as interesting as the Japan trip, but I’ll try to make up for that by hanging out with some crazy Dutch people when I hit up Holland in less than three months!

Melbourne Day 7: Golf and Drinks

2009-04-02T08:30:00.000-07:00

Today started at 5am with me being woken up by Chris’s alarm which plays Brian Adams’ “Summer of 69” really fucking loud. After it played out and then came on 6 times in a row, I started to wonder why it wasn’t being shut off and got up and did it myself. I then went back to sleep before waking up at 8am to get ready and go play golf with Chris and Chom.

We played at Skye Public Golf course. It was in reasonably good condition, but was probably the shortest course I’ve ever played at. A 185m par 4 is very short. And I put a drive on a par 4 on the green. Unfortunately I then ended up 4 putting and getting a bogey. The story of my day, really.

Chris won with 41, I played like a warmed up pile of dog shit, and still got 43 and Chom got 49, but neither Chom nor I were using our own clubs….. Well thats my excuse anyway.

After golf I said my goodbyes to Chom and Chris and headed back to Melbourne. I picked up Jana from her apartment and we went out for lunch and a drink in St Kilda. I was planning on going to the gym as Jana is nearly always asleep until about 4pm, but being as she was up and I had spent very little time with her over the weekend, I was very pleased to be able to hang out. After lunch we drove to Docklands and walked into the city for a coffee and for Jana to look for some ridiculously overpriced designer jeans.

She found the ones she wanted and we then walked down to Southbank to meet Trent. We had a few beers together and then walked into the city to go to Dumplings Plus, which has freakin awesome dumplings and was very well priced. Damn I love the food and drink prices in Melbourne.

Jana then had to run some errands in the hire car, so Me and Trent went to Madam Brussels for a drink, and then to Carlton Club. Trent dashed off to catch a train back to Ballarat and I met up with Nassima for a drink in Port Melbourne. Nassima has had some housemate issues recently and I understand how that can put a major downer on other facets of ones life. After a few beers Jeremy and Jana joined us as Nassima attempted to convince Jeremy that he should get an iPhone. He was not terribly thrilled by this, as Jeremy has a phone that sends sms and makes phone calls and that is all he wants. He does not need a phone that you can shake and it chooses a Melbourne restaurant for you….

After the bar staff at the Local noisily started moving the outdoor chairs and tables around us, we decided it was probably a good time to make our exit. I said my goodbyes to Jeremy and Nassima. Both of which I am unlikely to see before the big trip overseas. Jana and I headed home where she attempted to study and I tried in vain to get all my crap back into my suitcase.

Melbourne Day 6 : Phillip Island and the Frankston crew

2009-03-31T13:53:00.000-07:00

I was up at 6:30am to get ready and head off to the Phillip Island circuit. Luckily today would be a dry clear day and the circuit looked amazing in the morning light. After the obligatory forms were filled out, I got my gear, met my bike for the day and waited for the briefing to start. The briefing was all the standard sort of stuff about safety and it’s not a race day etc etc. After that, there was a draw, where anyone who stayed overnight the night before at The Waves apartments in Cowes go into the draw to win a free ride day. And, yep. I Won. I don’t know when I’m going to use it, but it was nice to win. My response of “Oh Booyah!” when my name was called got a laugh from the crowd, which was also amusing.

My first session out on the track I was following a guy from “California Superbike School” who just goes around at a steady pace and then after two laps you are on your own. Once we were on our own it was typical track day stuff ie; everyone is a hero down the straight, but their penises shrink significantly under braking or into the corner. I passed a few people throughout the session. I’m still not pushing it though as I have never ridden an 06 GSXR600 before, nor have a been to Phillip Island, hence I’m still getting used to my braking points, what lines too take and what gears to use. I can say however, that after one session, the circuit is amazing, and absolutely brilliant fun to ride. It’s flowing and fast and has some nice changes in elevation. Like a longer Wanneroo raceway with more left handers. The view out to Bass straight is quite spectacular and sometimes I had too remind myself to keep my eyes on the track. The session was over far too quickly and I returned to the pits with a big smile on my face.

In the session after me, a guy had a Ducati D12RR out on the track. For those who don’t know, this is a $120k road bike, that is effectively a road going MotoGP machine. This thing was an ANIMAL (although the guy riding it was pretty slow, I guess he’s thinking about the fact that it’s nearly one of a kind, so if he crashes it, it’s all over). I got some video, not that you can see much, but hopefully you’ll be able to hear the immense growl this thing puts out. Much more to my liking than the sound of the F1’s or V8’s.

In the second session I was getting a bit quicker and starting to get more confident with the speed and braking points. Halfway through the session there was a bird that somebody had hit right at the entry to turn 1, which is where you’re probably going about 190km/h, so avoiding that bird the first time was a little hairy. After the session the first timers went out and did some counter steering practice. Damn, I steer poorly at low speed.

The third session was mint fun as I was behind someone on a red R6 that was pretty much at my pace. I was a later braker, but he had better mid corner and exit speed, so I could never get past him. We carved our way through the field through the course of the session, lapping a few bikes more than once. I went up to him after the session ended to tell him how much fun I had, and he agreed that it was a brilliant good time.

Possibly he pushed it a little hard though as in the fourth session on about the third lap he binned his R6 coming out of turn 2. It looks as though he got on the throttle a little early and ran wide on exit. As of the end of the third session I can now comfortably get my knee down on turns 2 and 6. Unfortunately these are both left handers, so I’m gonna have to work on going quicker in the rights. Turn one is probably the most fun I’ve ever had on a bike as you are braking down from about 240k/h and taking the corner at about 180km/h. Freakin crazy fun!

In the fifth session I stayed behind a guy I’d met named Mike who was on a 675 and wanted to know how far away he was from putting his knee down. I stayed behind him for two laps but he kept slowing down for slow people, instead of passing them. His best was about an inch and a half away, and after sitting behind him for two laps I went by and set about catching the guys who had passed me in the time I was staying behind him. I’d caught them a few laps later and then continues to work on my pace and lines. I got my right knee down on the turn 4 hairpin, which was very pleasing and then before I knew it, the session was over.

In the last session I was going as fast as I could. I didn’t get passed by anyone and passed nearly everyone in the group. I got my knee down on the Honda Hairpin right hander, so 2 out of the four right handers I was getting knee down action, and was very pleased with this. It was balls to the wall fun, and again, before I knew it, the session was over. I came into the pits and got out of my gear. I was happy with all of it except the AGV helmet. It was crap. The 06 GSXR600 was perfect, and if I was staying in Australia I would definitely upgrade from my 400 to a 600.

I said my goodbyes to the staff and some people I had met and took my stuff out to the car. I saw a dude going through an accident report for his Aprilia RSV (about a $25k bike). He had seen the chequered flag for the end of the session, and that had taken his mind off the braking point that was coming up, and he had then gone into the sand. It was his first ride day at Philip Island and he had binned his bike in the last corner that you are doing any speed, in the last session of the day. Cruel.

I then made my way off the Island, stopping to take a few photo’s along the way, and headed towards Frankston, where I am catching up with a bunch of people that Woo and I met in Japan.

I met up with Chris, Bowen (whose first name is Chris), Chom, Sheryn and Emma in Frankston. It was quite amusing when we met in Hakuba as it meant there were four Chris’s. Due to that fact, I will elaborate. I am Taylor, Woo is Woo, Chris Bowen is Bowen and Chris as in, “Chris and Em” is Chris. We went out for dinner in what must have been the most exclusive restaurant in Frankston as they told Chris they were full, yet when we managed to get in there the place was three quarters empty. The service was quite good though and the food was nice, although I did eat far too much. Not a new experience for me, unfortunately.

After that I came back to Chris and Emma’s and we continued drinking while we talked shit for a few hours and then played Guitar Hero (Chris is very good) and then Streetfighter 4 (Chris is not so good) on xbox360. I had decided to stay the night in Frankston (scary I know) and play golf with Chom and Chris in the morning as Chris had the day off the next day, and it seems like Chom doesn’t do a whole lot anyway, so he was confident he could take the day off also.

I ended up getting to sleep at around 1:30am. It had been a full day. I had met and fallen in love with a new mistress that I would not see again for many years. I guess I’ll just have to find a new one in Europe. Shouldn’t be too hard.

Melbourne Day 5 : Friends and travel to Phillip Island

2009-03-31T00:14:00.000-07:00

After a decent nights sleep I was up at the crack of 10am to get ready and head off to the gym. On the way to the gym I decided to stop at a noodle place to try the gyoza. They were very good, but still not as good as Belle’s. I was in and out of the gym in 90 minutes and then I spent an hour walking around Melbourne city looking for a white cuff.

No luck on the cuff front, but I did buy a bunch of books. I figure I’m gonna be on a plane for quite a few hours over the next few months, so I felt it was a wise investment.

I then met Nassima at Melbourne Central, and gave her the present from Jules and the shoes she’d left on her last visit to Perth. We swapped travel stories, with me telling her all about Japan and her telling me all about her trip to India, Malaysia and Thailand. After a few beers I had to go pick up my hire car and Nass had to go to her lecture.

After I got the car I went to Crown casino to meet Jana for half price beer and pizza at Automatic. I was going to get there early so I played Streetfighter 4 in the arcade next to Crown. When I was finished getting my ass handed to me, I walked back through Crown to Automatic. It’s about a 5 minute walk. Along the way I walked past Tex Perkins (rock star), Danny Bhoi (comedian) and then while I was sitting, waiting for Jana, Ruebens Barrichello and Felipe Massa (F1 Drivers) walked past. You wouldn’t see that many celebrities in Perth in a year! (or maybe I just hang out at the wrong places).

I had dinner with Jana and Jeremy. It was really awesome to see Jeremy again, as after some of the issues of last year, I doubted we would ever be friends again, but it looks like things are healing, which is great.

After dinner I went home, grabbed my stuff and jumped in the car. It’s about a 2 hour drive to Phillip Island, so I was going to be getting there at around 11pm. When I arrived I was hugely surprised at my room at The Waves apartments. I walked in and saw a dining table, a kitchenette and a bunk bed, and I thought that was it, but the room had a spa in the bathroom and another huge bedroom with couches and a double bed. It was almost a shame that I was there alone, and would be only using it for 6 hours.

But I didn’t have time to be thinking about the room. I needed my rest. Tomorrow I would be taking on the best racetrack in the world.

Melbourne Day 4 : Hanging out with friends

2009-03-31T00:13:00.000-07:00

My delusions of getting up this morning and going to the gym were pretty much dead the second I agreed to go to the supermarket with Jana at 2am. Hence I didn’t feel to bad that I didn’t drag my ass out of bed til 11am. I cleaned up a little of the cooking mess from last night and got my shit together and left the house by 12:30.

I was meeting Monique at Melbourne Central at 1pm, and I was running a little late. Luckily I got a message that she was running late also. Monique is the cool Chinese girl I met in Hakuba and snowboarded with for a few days. She had been out drinking all night the night before so I was not at all surprised to see her rock up still drunk/ hungover.

She was little and loud, just like I remembered, although her volume seemed to have increased when it was not set against the background noise of a language I didn’t understand.

We got some breakfast at a little place just off Flinders lane and then went for a beer at Transport in Federation Square. We were sitting out in the blazing sun and I was glad that I had put sunscreen on before I left the house.

We then walked around the city for a few hours just talking shit, hanging shit on each other and generally making each other laugh. She had to go to her Uncles 50th so she drove me home, and then proceeded to incorrectly program her NavMan so it got her lost on the way home.

I had to meet Jana to get the keys to get into the house, and I then got changed into some warmer clothes before heading back into the city to meet Peta and Clayton for a few drinks.

Peta and Clayton were at Madame Brussells, which is at the Parliament end of Bourke st, on the 4th floor. It’s got a huge balcony where most people were sitting. Peta and Clayton had been drinking for a while, Clayton having drunk himself stupid the night before at a bucks night. They were sitting with friends, whom I was introduced to, but they pretty much kept to themselves, which was good because I wasn’t really in the mood to make nice with new people, but more interested on how everything was going with Peta and Clayton and their impending marriage

It was great to see them again. The topics, as always ranged from how Melbourne is so much better than Perth, how annoying Joycey can be, future travelling adventures and poo. I dont know why poo always comes up, but it does.

One of the best things about Madame Brussells is that they are well aware that it gets very cold in Melbourne, so they have piles and piles of blankets for people to use when it would normally be too cold to be outside on the balcony. Great idea! However, due to Claytons colour blindness he chose a pretty pink blanket, and had to endure Peta’s jibes until he gave her that blanket and went and got himself a blue one.

After a few drinks Peta and Clayton caught a tram back to Fitzroy as they both needed to work in the morning. Whereas I went to MacDonalds to use their free WiFi before catching the last tram back to Port Melbourne, determined that tonight I would get some decent sleep, and get up reasonably early.

Melbourne Day 3 : Formula 1 Qualifying

2009-03-29T05:27:00.000-07:00

This morning I had delusions of getting up early and going to the F1. I figured I’d at least go and check it out, as it was $85 to get in, and I’m not exactly a huge car racing fan, but I’m in Melbourne, and it’s on, so I feel more like I should go than I want to go.

I dragged my ass out of bed at 12noon, and felt like I had missed my chance, but I figured I’d walk down to Albert Park anyway and at least hear them in the flesh, even if I couldn’t see them. It’s a lovely walk to Albert Park from Jana’s place in Port Melbourne as you walk along the beach, and then up Victoria street with all it’s cafés.

I arrived at Albert Park to the scream of a 2 seater Minardi taking the CEO of ING around the track. These things are LOUD. They’re selling earplugs everywhere, and you need them. I bought some sunscreen and some earplugs from a chick near the gate, and was still wondering if I could afford the $85 to spend the day by myself. I had kinda decided that I wouldn’t bother buying a ticket. I’d just walk around the outside of the track and get a reasonable vantage point and that would do me. As I was standing at the gate, and older guy, probably about 45 ish, walked up to these guys next to me and said “Here’s a ticket fellas” They said “no thanks, we’ve already got ours”. At this point I chirped up and said I’d take it. Without hesitation the older dude handed it to me and told me to have a good day. SCORE.

So I wandered into the track area and found a good position for the first session of the day which was starting in about 30 minutes. I hadn’t missed anything, as I’d forgotten that the Australian GP had been moved to a later slot to make the European audiences happier.

These cars are fast and loud. You’re not really watching a race, or even cars going around a track, because you only see one section, but Jesus they are so fucking loud and spastically fast.

After the session ended I walked around to see what else it going on. There’s your standard car displays and such. And that giant truck container that folds out in a 2 story xxxx bar. There’s also a day rave that ruins on the Saturday and Sunday, tonight Potbelleez are headlining and tomorrow it’s Sneaky Sound System. It only costs another $30 on top of your ticket price to go, and it goes all day. You get a good vantage point from inside the rave of the track, so you don’t miss any of the racing either. If I was here with a group of friends, that could definitely have been an option.

I got a good spot to see turns 1 and 2 and waited for qualifying to start. They had an Australian GT race on before that and it was pretty cool to see Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Porsches flying around a racetrack. When the F1 guys came on it was again very loud and very fast, though not terribly exciting. Webber did well and got into the final ten shootout, but was then pretty useless and ended up 10th.

After that the V8’s came on. They weren’t as loud or as fast, but being a race it was a bit more exciting. The sound is very impressive, an angry throaty growl as you’d expect from V8’s. I left when they finished and walked back to Jana’s place. She was getting ready for some form of pageant where she was competing in the state final tonight.

After Jana had finished with the bathroom, which was quite a while, she headed out to her pageant. I laid on the couch for a while, debating whether of not to go out and catch up with Alex. I hadn’t seen her in ages, and I really should make an effort, but I was really enjoying the not standing up experience that comes with lying down, and didn’t really want to change that. In the end I grew a pair, got ready and went out. Alex and her friends were at Croft, which I knew reasonably well and by 10:30pm I had met them there.

Alex is still the same Alex that lived with me seven years ago. She’s older, more mature and lesbian now. But she’s the same talkative little girl who likes to irritate strangers for her own amusement.

After we’d had a drink at Croft, we moved on to Section 8 for a drink. I sat down at talked with Alex and her friends a bit, but decided at 12:30 that it would be in my best interests to catch the last tram home and have a cheap and early night.

Waiting for the tram I was a little hungry, and in some small form of recompense for the lamb kebab last night and the hot dog at the F1 today, I purchased and ate an apple. What have I become?

On my way home I got a message from Jana asking me where I was and letting me know that she had not won her pageant. She arrived home not too long after me and wanted to go out. I was already ready for bed and had not desire to go out for drinks. I was quite happy with my day, and the fact that it had all been relatively cheap, and didn’t want to go out chasing the night.

What is sometimes the most annoying thing about Jana, is also usually her greatest quality. She is very spontaneous, and also very hard to say no to. It’s always fun being around her, because you’re never quite sure where you’re gonna end up. In the end we compromised. Jana was very excited that with her pageant over, she was allowed carbs again, so we decided to binge together. We walked down to the all night Coles in Port Melbourne and wandered around together in an empty supermarket for a while before deciding our carbarific feast would be Mexican. We bought all the ingredients for Quesadillas and Nachos, and we planned to eat both.

Upon arriving home we cooked up the Nachos and sat down to watch Walk the Line. Jana made it though about a quarter of the Nachos before declaring she was full, and about a quarter of the movie before falling asleep. However being a man who finishes what he starts. I polished off the nachos on my own, and stayed up til 5am watching the end of the movie.

I guess I haven’t changed that much after all.

Melbourne Day 2 : Hawks Vs Cats

2009-03-29T05:25:00.001-07:00

Well, like any other day on holiday, I got out of bed quite late and had missed my opportunity to go to the Friday practises of the Formula 1.

Instead I headed into the city and went to the gym. Nothing terribly interesting apart from the fact that the entrance to the gym was incredibly difficult to find and I spend ten minutes walking up and down stairs and around Melbourne central looking like a moron.

After the gym I grabbed a boost juice and proceeded to head home. Melbourne really is a great place to be. The weather was good, I was feeling healthy after a hard workout and walking through the city with my ipod playing Faith No More, I felt good. It’s a nice time to be me. With all the craziness of the past year, I had lost the pure enjoyment of travel and experiencing new and different things. With the big overseas move just around the corner, the fear of leaving what I am comfortable with has been replaced by excitement.

I jumped a tram and headed home. I needed to get ready for the Hawks versus cats game. A friend of Marnies, Rob, is a AFL member and had got me a ticket for the match. This was fantastic for two reasons. A) I got a free ticket. B) I had people to go with. Rob is a North Melbourne supporter and his mate, Marco is a Hawks supporter. The game was great fun. We all got a little too drunk but the final quarter was very exciting. I’m reasonably happy with going down by 8 pts to the best team in the league when we have 6 of our best 22 out through injury and a few others in the team that were underdone.

After the game, Rob and I made our way to Chapel street for Ali’s goodbye party. I went to uni with Ali but haven’t really seen her for the last 5 years. Hence it was kinda interesting that I was at her goodbye party. Ali is off to the UK so I will probably see her more there, than I ever have while she’s been in Melbourne.

Rob and I waited for Marnie to arrive only to receive a message that she was not going to be able to make it. Rob made his exit and then I said my goodbyes, made my way home and passed out drunk in bed. I woke up about 7am and got out of my clothes and got some real sleep.

Melbourne Day One : Cousins Vs Judd

2009-03-26T20:20:00.000-07:00

Okay. I’m back.

Admittedly this trip is not going to be anywhere near as exciting as the Japan trip, but as I love Melbourne so much and have been here so often, it would be remiss of me to discount it as a place worth writing about.

I arrived this (Thursday) morning after coming over on the Qantas redeye. Thank God I now only fly Qantas for domestic. It’s so much better than Virgin or Jetstar, and the difference in price is negligible. Overall the flight was as good as could be expected from a redeye, and we arrived in Melbourne earlier than expected.

I didn’t think Jana would be too stoked by me waking her up at 5:30 in the a.m. when I arrived at Southern Cross station, so I put my suitcase in a locker ($10 for 24 hours, even though I only wanted it for 2 hours) and walked into the city to find a 24 hours McDonalds to use their free WiFi.

After finding a Maccas not too far along I got the internet hooked up and sat there drinking one of their shitty coffees and plodding around on ze interwebz. Neither my computer nor their WiFi connection were terribly happy with doing too much with face book, so it kept freezing up when I tried to do stuff on the ‘book. At the moment I will give my new computer the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was MacDonalds fault. At least I hope it was.

After retrieving my suiitcase and heading out to Port Melbourne I met Jana out the front of her apartment, dumped my stuff and we went out for breakfast. Unbeknownst to each other we had both been on a strict Atkins (or at least No Carbs, sugars and Alcohol) regime over the past month, but we both broke the carbs rule this morning. Mmmmmmmmmm Carbarific.

Jana’s apartment seemss as if there was some sort of monumental mistake in construction. Now, we’re in Melbourne, where if you’re lucky you might get 3-4 months of real summer weather per year. Jana’s apartment has an outdoor area that is seriously bigger than the whole interior apartment. It’s not like it’s a massive apartment either. Jana’s room is tiny, and yet outside you have about 40sqm of balcony! I think in construction they just put the walls in and then stood back, realised their mistake and just hoped nobody would notice.

I went into Prahran with Jana as she needed to return some shoes and earrings. We grabbed a bite to eat and then I left her to go meet Marnie before the football. It was Richmond versus Carlton tonight and the game had been hyped up by the Cousins versus Judd angle. Unfortunately the game was a complete letdown as Richmond once again went out of their way to make their opposition look better than they actually are and got thumped by over ten goals.

Marnie and I had fun though as Marnie had smuggled in some beers and a bottle of wine. Obviously this means I have started drinking again after going for 25 days without touching a drop. I decided to break it earlier than the end of March as most of the people I will be seeing on this trio I wont see again for 4-5 years.

As we walked into the MCG Marnie had a bit of a conniption as there were security guards were going through people bags at the entrance. Fortunately she got through without a check. I guess she mustn’t look at dodgy as we had first imagined. We were seated next to to girls who had just come over from Portugal a month earlier. They were studying Sports Law and were trying to understand the game, hence I had to go through many of the rules with them. We then inevitably spoke about soccer, and while they understood my hatred of Cristiano Ronaldo, they did not agree with it.

After the game Marnie and I met up with some of Marnie’s friends; Ali and Daisy. We all went out for a drinks. Along the way Marnie stole a dudes scarf, and while running around trying to get away from him, jumped into a recent model BMW which was sitting on the side of the road with it’s door open. Surprisingly the people in the car were not actually waiting for Marnie and they quickly asked her to get out.

We went to the James Squire pub, where Ali left after a drink. Then on to Red Hummingbird, where along the way Daisy picked up a jacket of a park bench and wore it the remaining few blocks to the bar, which was unfortunately pretty dead, so Daisy left us and the jacket and went home. Marnie and I then went to the Carlton Club, which was really good and not at all affiliated with the football team.

Eventually Marnie left me by running off without warning down St Kilda road toward her house which was about 5 kms away, while I was trying to convince her to get in a taxi and I’d drop her off on my way home to Jana’s.

She wondered why her feet and legs hurt the next morning.

Japan Day Seventeen : Coming home....

2009-02-23T15:20:00.000-08:00

The last day began quite early as I needed to get up and pack up my stuff. With mine and Woo’s stuff all over the place, the hotel room looked like an earthquake had hit it. After breakfast I started the pack up and we were out of the hotel and waiting for our bus to Nagano by 9am.

We did have plans to go see the Zenkoji temple in Nagano, but it was snowing and all the streets were covered in slush. We hence decided to catch an earlier shinkansen into Tokyo and put our stuff in a locker and look around.

I slept most of the way from Nagano to Tokyo, so the trip went very quickly. When we got to Tokyo we went searching for the lockers. Unfortunately there were no lockers free that would fit our bags, so we paid 2500yen to leave them in a cloak room.

We jumped a train to Akihabra and searched for a few trinkets and other things that will remind us of Japan. Woo bought himself a Bumblebee transformer, which he was very pleased with. I bought a bobble head ninja for my desk at work.

We stopped for a coffee near the Tokyo station after we had returned from Akihabra. Woo decided he wanted to play with his Bumblebee. This is a toy that says on the box “ages 5 and up” and Woo was struggling just to be able to get the packaging open. He then followed the instructional diagram slowly and eventually had a transformed the Camaro into a robot. He then set about changing it back to a car, this would prove more difficult.

As I sat there and watched Woo fumble with a toy for five year olds, I thought about what I will miss about Japan. There has been so much that has happened over the past two and a half weeks that I barely know where to start.

I will miss the legs. Japanese girls have the best pins, hands down. It’s the middle of winter and they are wearing little skirts and stockings. Dear God, I will miss the legs.

I will miss the way everything just works. The transport especially, is unbelievably good. Even though there is an obvious language barrier, Woo and I were able to get whatever we needed, from change for the Laundromat, to changing our shinkansen tickets to an earlier train. We visited places that were not exactly set up for foreigners, and we thought we were gonna be screwed, but every single person we asked was always happy to help.

I will miss the service. I can’t understand them, and most of the time they can’t understand me. However, I have always been greeted with a smile, and that smile does not turn into a scowl when they realise I can’t speak Japanese. Throughout this trip, we have always been treated like we are the most important people in the room. Something that is severely lacking in the service one receives in Perth.

I will miss the soundtrack. This is really hard to explain, but Japan has its own soundtrack. This soundtrack is mostly a cacophony of sounds, assaulting your brain as Rambo would a Burmese concentration camp. On a walk through a tech store, the equivalent of a Rick Hart for example, and you will find Japanese employees standing on ladders, screaming at you through megaphones. Walk around any shopping district and you will be yelled at. Even though I am pretty sure they know I can’t understand them, they still yell. Walk into a Pub or restaurant, and in most places all the staff will scream “Hajimemashite”, which roughly means “pleased to meet you”. Rather than a beeping at the pedestrian crossing, there will be a little musical flourish to let you know it’s time to cross the street. Another little musical flourish at the train stations will let you know to stand clear, as the doors are closing.

I will miss the randomness. I cannot possibly put into words how truly random this pace is. It is like nothing you can imagine. Woo and I have totally worn out the words “that’s so random”. We have totally worn out the words “brain explosion” or “atama ga bakuhatsu”. There were even sometimes where things were so weird that all we could do was look at each other and laugh. They have strange cartoon characters everywhere, both for community announcements and for advertising. They have muscle bound cartoon men as Pachinko parlour mascots. Pachinko itself is a random ass combination of pokies, pinball and arcade video games.

After forty five minutes, Woo had returned Bumblebee to a Camaro. We then went and grabbed our bags and got on the shuttle out to Narita Airport.

I sat on the train, Woo reading my book which he has become addicted to over the past few days. Looking out the window I am very sad to be leaving Japan, more so than anywhere I have been before it. Unfortunately I am not as well travelled as, well, anyone I know really, but this place has changed me. I held my fingers to the glass on the train, trying to somehow tell the country itself what an amazing experience I have had, and how grateful I am for it. To let Japan know that I love her. To let her know that she has far exceeded all my expectations and then some.

I know I’m being much more flowery in my writing in this last entry of the blog. This is because I have come to a few realisations about my life and plans that I had regarding it, and assumptions I had made of the people who would be involved with it. Both related to the trip, and completely unrelated. It is also that while I am sad to be leaving Japan, I am ready and happy to be returning to Australia. Partially for all the obvious reasons such as sleeping in my own bed, with my own pillow (every pillow I had in Japan was awful) and being able to go down to the shops and not feel like a gimp because I can’t speak the language. I look forward to fitting in, well as much as I normally do anyway.

I started missing Australia when we were snowboarding. We’d spent so long avoiding Gaijin, that when we were forced to hang out with Aussies again, we resisted a little. Aussies are awesome. Yes, sometimes we may drink too much, sometimes we may get rowdy, we may even have four grown men playing stacks on in a hotel room. However we are a fun and friendly nation of travellers. Woo and I pretty much had dinner or drinks with a different bunch of people every evening while we were in Hakuba. All of them lovely. It was quite a relief to actually be able to converse with people other than Woo. No offense to him, as we have got along better than either of us imagined, but I need people around me. I miss my friends and I look forward to seeing them all again soon.

We got to the airport and checked in. I flirted with the possibility of dropping two grand on a new tiny laptop, but decided against it. Japan would be awesomely cheap if the exchange rate wasn’t so awful, so I decided to get it in Australia, as talk them down to a better price. We had our last meal in Japan at the airport and a farewell Sapporo draught. We then boarded the plane and said our final farewell to this fantastic country.

Japan. It hits you in the mind.

Japan Day Sixteen : Hakuba 5th day on the slopes...

2009-02-22T14:21:00.000-08:00

Today was the last day on the slopes, and it hadn't snowed last night.

Woo decided he was not going to come boarding today as his neck was still very sore and we figured that with no snow last night, the runs would be very icy. I headed out at about 10am and was pleased to find the runs were reasonably soft, and the crowds weren't huge either.

Woo came down a bit later to take some photos, and was feeling better. When he found out the runs were quite soft, he decided he did want to board today, and then had to go back and get his board and gear. I ran into Monique and boarded with her for most of the day.

I normally stand goofy, which means I have my right foot forward. I spent most of today practicing doing it the other way, so with my left foot down the hill. By the end of the day, I was pretty decent at it, although I'm sure I dont look terribly smooth.

At about 2:30pm, they closed all the lifts at the top of the mountain due to high winds, and this brought shitloads of people down onto the beginner runs we were on. Not long after this I decided to call it a day (and a week) and end my snowboarding adventure.

I walked the 10min back to the hotel, and had a chance to look around the village. This whole area was originally built as the village for the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics and the signs are still everywhere.

I got back had and shower and a bit of a nap before Woo and I went out for dinner with Kirsty and Josh. We went to a little place called Sari-Sari just down the road and had some tempura and also some more western food like Pizza and roast pork.

At the end of the night, the restaurant drove us back to the hotel, and I pretty much went straight to bed. We have around twenty hours of travel tomorrow to get back to Perth, and we're gonna spend a few hours in Nagano on the way back and go to the Zenkoji temple.

Japan Day Fifteen : Hakuba 4th day on the slopes...

2009-02-20T23:33:00.000-08:00

This morning was looking awesome but feeling terrible.

I had slept very poorly all night. Everytime I moved, my knee hurt. After looking up the symptoms on the internet, and now becoming an expert, I have diagnosed myself with a sprained medial collateral ligament if I'm lucky. If I'm unlucky, a partial tear.

I could not fully straighten my leg without pain, and I also couldn't put weight on it while it was bent at less than 90'. Things were not feeling good.

However the snow looked amazing. Another foot last night, and no rain on the way. There was no way I was missing this. I got out to the slopes and went up a lift with Woo. My knee felt fine until I sat down to bind in my left foot. I couldn't get up without pain. Thats a problem. I didnt feel any pain while on the board going down, so I guess I was just going to learn not to stack it so often.

They had shut down the top of the mountain today due to high winds, which meant that with the good snow, good weather, weekend and half the lift running, it was stupidly busy. Me and Woo went to the other side of the mountain, but the lines were just as bad, and there's no way their green runs were actually for beginners. We did a few runs there and then came back to Sakka, where we were before and had lunch.

As expected the cafeteria was packed. I grabbed some seats while Woo got the food. A small Asian girl came back the her stuff, which she had left of the table to mark her spot as she got lunch. She looked and me, I looked at her. Then she said in a broad Australian accent "Hows it going?" I was a little surprised, to say the least. Her name is Monique, she's an ABC, (Australian Born Chinese, for anyone who's not Crispy) and lives in Melbourne. Me and Woo talked about how much we love Melbourne, which seems to be a theme whenever we meet anyone from there.

We boarded most of the afternoon together, including going up to Skyline, only to find it closed and having to come all the way back down on the stupid fucking trail that I hate. I fell over while on the trail, and landed on my ass. I'm pretty sure I ruptured my bowel. I felt like I was gonna shit myself, and if it wasn't for the fact that I was halfway up a mountain, I definitely would have made a visit to the Mens.

I finally made it back down the bottom, and did a few more runs with Monique. Woo had gone back to the hotel by this stage, although I didn't know that. I got back to the hotel and found him at the bar. Apparently he had a mega stack and heard his neck click and then decided that it was a good idea for him to call it a day.

We went out to a pub called "The Pub" that night. There was some sort of "fire festival" on, but it was just a few fireworks and some people skiing down the slopes at night. We didn't go out in the cold, instead we stayed in the warmth while Woo did doubles of whatever he was drinking and got himself well nailed. Kirsty and Josh found him most amusing, especially while we were waiting for a bus to take us back to our hotel at 1:30am. It was called the "party bus", but when it showed up, it was basically just a Tarago. They did give us a lift back to our hotel though, and thats all that matters.

Japan Day Fourteen : Hakuba 3rd day on the slopes...

2009-02-19T21:54:00.000-08:00

Today was a bad day for PandaHat. A very bad day indeed.

In discussions last night with a few staff, we were told that this season in Hakuba is the worst snow season (as in amount of snow) for 37 years. However I woke up this morning to see another good foot of fresh powder and was very excited to be able to go out and board for another day without the fear of stacking it and bashing into some ice.

With Pandahat on my head, I got to the slopes, only for it to start RAINING! Fuck that. It's not supposed to rain at the snow. Pandahat is very fluffy and hence was just soaking up all the water, so for most of the day I wore my hood over the top. Although when I put it on after I went in for lunch, i did get some interested stares from all the nearby kids.

My boarding is getting much better, and unless I am trying 360's, I can get all the way down the run without coming close to stacking it.

Except one time this morning, when I was looking for Woo, who was supposed to be on one of the runs. I saw him working his way down the run from the chair lift, but we kept missing each other so I was trying to get down the run as fast as I could to catch him. I did this a few times and was gradually catching him. On about my third fast run, I was cracking along, and looking up to the chair lift to try to see where Woo was and my front end dug in. I kid you not when I say that I would have flown for good four metres before cartwheeling three times, bending my knee in a way it's not supposed to go in the process. I lay in the soft snow and laughed to myself as it was such a massive stack and I was very lucky there was soft fresh snow.

I came back to the hotel at about 2pm as I was soaked through and freezing my tits off. Woo decided to stay, as he was improving massively and wanted to stay out there and work on it.

By the time Woo got home, he had sorted turning on his toes and was very pleased with himself. We discussed injuries and techniques before goint out to dinner at a bar called 'Marzen'. We chatted to the bar man, who's name was Kim. Kim is from Adelaide and speaks nearly fluent Japanese. He's over here for a season and to see a bit of stuff, earn some money, get his accomodation paid for and get snow snowboarding practice in.

By the end of the night, my knee was feeling pretty average and we went in for an early night. It was snowing, and barring any stupid rain tomorrow, it was gonna be a good day!

Japan Day Thirteen : Hakuba 2nd day on the slopes....

2009-02-19T05:01:00.000-08:00

I woke up feeling a little worse for wear, but upon looking outside and seeing about ten inches of fresh snow, I felt a lot better.

Had my breakfast and said goodbye to Dawesy and Kell. They were off to Tokyo and Woo and I had given them very specific instructions of where was good and what they should try to check out. After getting my gear together, it was out to the mountain again.

Josh, whom Woo had nicknamed 'Gigantor', had offered to give Woo a lesson the next morning, so we went out with him and his girlfriend Kirsty. Unfortunately they kinda weren't thinking when they jumped on the big lift, and now me and Woo were halfway up the mountain and nowhere near any wide beginner runs. We only had the trail to go back down, and while it's a very shallow decline, its only the width of a road, and has a sheer dropoff on one side. Not the place you want to be when you are just learning. Woo did quite well before he cracked it again and picked up his board. I went off down the hill and did a few runs before I saw him at the bottom again.

We did another run, and Woo barely fell over at all, but his muscles were sore from all the constant stiffness, so he decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel. I stayed out to keep practicing my carving. I kept going until about 2pm, but then started to feel as if I was actually getting worse. I was ready to go home myself, however decided to dtay out due to the amazing powder still on offer. I wasn't sure if we'd get another night of snow this good, hence I didn't want to waste it. I did quite a few more runs and was carving without any problems, so I decided to try a new run. It meant going up a really long chair lift, then I would be doing an intermediate, that would later turn into a beginner and then back onto the slope I was used to.

I got up to the top of the run and every sphincter I have puckered up. The red (intermediate) run did not look this steep from below. I actually had to walk around a bit and take out a map, as I was sure this was too steep to be intermediate, but alas, it was the correct run and it was my only way down. I strapped in and headed off extremely slowly, in fact, I did the whole run in incredibly slow leaf style. I was scary as shit and I was tense the whole way, but I got down with no problems. Once I got back to the green run, I was apples and carved my way down to the bottom and got on the bus to come back to the hotel. I later spoke to one of the guys who snowboards in Europe a lot, and apparently that would be a Black run in Europe. Holy Crap!

I got home and Woo was reading my book, which is not entirely suprising as I'd been going on about how good it is all holiday. We had a fairly quiet dinner with the Melbourne crew, who all leave tomorrow and then retired early so we can rest our weary bodies. My glutes, coccyx and neck are all particularly sore, and I'm nearly out of Voltaren gel.

Japan Day Twelve : Hakuba 1st day on the slopes....

2009-02-19T03:28:00.000-08:00

We got down to the restaurant at 8am for our included breakfast. It's the only place on the holiday where we've got the breakfast, and it's awesome. We would have never been up in time for the breakfasts as other places, so it would have been a waste of money, but being as we're planning on being out on the slopes by 9am, a decent feed is important.

Woo and I got to the ski school where we were informed that they dont do English beginner lessons from that location. We had to catch another bus to the other side of the mountain. Being as Woo and I had both done a day snowboarding at Mt Buller about 2 years ago, we decided to have a crack at it on one beginner slope before we schlepped ourselves all over the mountain for a lesson.

We went up, and as expected, we both stacked it coming off the lift. I managed to remember what to do from last time fairly quickly, and was soon leafing down the run. Woo however had started back at square one, not entirely surprising, as it was ages ago we went to Buller, and he's never skated. So he picked up his bat an ball and went home (by that I mean he picked up his board, walked the rest of the way down the run, and went to find the bus to take him to his lesson).

I stayed on the slopes, and within a few runs was already better than I was at the end of the last time I was at the snow. I had the whole leafing thing pretty sorted, and now felt I could get down the run without falling easily, hence I started trying to turn on my toes. When you leaf, you stay looking down the hill the whole time, turning on your toes requires you to have your back facing down the hill. Bit more scary, and I'm shit at it, but you have to be able to turn on either side of your body to look like a proper snowboarder.

I was really enjoying this alone time out in the beautiful snow with my iPod playing my favourite tracks. Although it did irritate me that every time I stacked (which was reasonably often) at least one of my ear pods would fall out. Then I couldn't put it back in til I got back down the bottom, as it required taking my glove off. I soon worked that I would get the most out of my day if I dealt with that sort of shit (and cleaning goggles etc) while I was sitting around on the chair lift.

After a few hours of this, I went back to the original run, as I was going to take a different lift and go try out another run. There I found Woo and one of the girls from last night, Kelli. Woo had gotten to the other place 15min late for a lesson, but he had found wrist guards, so he was feeling a little better. He still had no confidence, and Kelli was probably a little better than me, so we all went out together. Woo showed steady signs of improvement throughout the day, but his posture was very stiff, which puts a lot of strain on your muscles. I was still doing mega stacks trying to toe turn. While snowboarding, the worst thing you can do is catch your front edge in the snow. It stops your board dead, yet your body keeps going forward, sending you flying through the air, most likely faceplanting the snow. It is affectionately known as a "Superman". I did this a few times, it's not the most fun. If you catch you front edge while turning on your toes, hence your back is facing down the hill, you perform what is known as a "backwards Superman". I did the hugest backwards superman this afternoon. I must have flown about eight metres before landing on my back and sliding for another twenty.

By the end of the day however, Woo could get down a run without stacking it, and I had my toe turns mostly sorted. A very successful day all in all.

We got back to the hotel and had a few drinks. Jeremy was serving at the bar, and he is awesome. If you ask for a bourbon and coke, he keeps pouring the bourbon til you tell him to stop, hence me and Woo got fairly toasted off three drinks. We met up with the crew from last night. They were going out o dinner and it was Kelli and Dawesy's last night there. We went to a little restaurant down the hill that brings you out all the raw stuff and you cook it yourself in a hotplate at your table. It was delicious, but i did smell a lot like barbeque. Tonight was also the first night that Pandahat made an appearance. Sara gave me a warm hat that looks like a panda head to wear while at the snow, and I wore it out with the crew, which they found very amusing.

After a nice meal, a few of the boys ran over the road to grab some beers, but they came back with about three shopping bags full of beer. By the time we got back to the hotel it had been snowing for hours and everything was covered. We stayed up drinking in the common room til about 11pm, once venturing outside for a drunken snowball fight (which was fucken awesome fun) before going back to our room to continue drinking with a couple of the folks. not entirely such a good idea, as it meant I had nowhere to go when I wanted to go to sleep, but it was a really good night with a completely new and random bunch of people, so the fact that I didn't get to sleep til 2am didn't bother me so much.

And it was gonna snow all night and I was really looking forward to tomorrow!

Japan Day Eleven : Travelling to Hakuba....

2009-02-17T05:44:00.000-08:00

I think my body had forgotten how to fall asleep. It only knows how to pass out.

Woo and I had an extremely quiet night, but neither of us was able to sleep. I woke up at 7am, after getting maybe two hours, Woo continued to sleep til 8:40.

We packed up the room, which still looked as if there was a grenade detonated in there (i feel sorry for the little Japanese housekeeper who would have to deal with it). Checked out of the hotel, fought our way through thousands of people at the Osaka train station and finally made it to Shin-Osaka to catch the shinkansen to Nagoya. We changed to a standard train there, and headed up into the countryside. It was very beautiful, and had been snowing in parts. We arrived into Nagano, and it was freaking cold. Seriously cold. We then jumped the bus up to Hakuba and to our hotel where we would be for the next 6 days.

We got our hire gear sorted and we now have everything needed to start the snowboarding part of our trip. It feels like ages go we arrived in Tokyo, as it was a completely different world to what we have now. There are Aussies everywhere, and very few Japanese.

We had to go into town on the shuttle, and met up with a few Aussies while waiting for the bus. They were going out for one of their mates 25th birthdays. We tagged along with them. It was a really fun night. Most of them have all met each other on the mountain. It's a big change from the last 9 days where we have nearly completely avoided Gaijin.

But, unlike the last week, I maintained my self control and am back in my hotel room before 11pm. Woo is still downstairs drinking with a few folk, but I'm sure he'll be fine. Well maybe....

I hit the slopes tomorrow. My goal is to not do an injury, as there will be four more days of snowboarding to follow...

Japan Day Ten : Recovery and Washing...

2009-02-16T05:55:00.000-08:00

What just happened? Seriously.

Woo and I dragged ourselves up and out of bed at around 1pm. The bender was over. NO amound of motivation was getting us out again tonight. And neither of us had any clean clothes, so today was a day that would be dedicated to doing our washing. I had been given a map by the hotel to a nearby laundromat (they call them Coin Laundries over here), but it was in Japanese.

I got lost in the area surrounding the laundromat, before asking a local gentleman, and he was nice enough to help me find it. The washing took ages, and we were worried that we were being very rude by using three washers and then three dryers at once.

After the washing was done we went out for teppanyaki, which was excellent. And then decided to go back to the hotel and get ready for the second half of our holiday. The hotel room was a disaster area, so Woo cleaned it up while I wrote this.

I will never forget the last 5 days, if only I could remember them. :-P

Off to Hakuba tomorrow, where we have both made a pact that we will not be getting nailed every night. We'll see how that goes.

Japan Day Nine : Osaka Castle....

2009-02-15T19:55:00.000-08:00

Oh holeeee Jeeeeeeeeeebus. We have got to stop doing that.

We dragged ourselves out at about 3pm and jumped on a train to see the Osaka Castle. It is right in the middle of the city, so it was just a few stops away. As we walked from the train station to the castle, there was a bunch of stuff happenning on the pedestrian walkway.

Firstly there was some lion dancers. A little girl went up to them and the lion (or dragon or whatever it is supposed to be) pretended to eat her head. Her little sister (i think) was freaking out and going absolutely nuts. Her Dad wouldn't let go of her hand, so she was cowering behind him and screaming as the dragon came towards her. It was really kinda mean, but utterly hilarious.

We then passed what seemed to be a battle of the bands type thing. There were about 4 stages, all side by side with two bands going at once, belting out their j-pop and causing a wall of noise. There were street vendors set up everywhere and quite a fun atmosphere around. Osaka reminds me a lot of Melbourne.

The Osaka Castle is very pretty and really impressive. It's behind two moats and very high walls. It sits much higher than the land around it, so it looks over Osaka city. It and the Golden Temple are probably the most impressive historical stuff I have done in Japan.

After we'd finished looking through the castle, which is a museum of Japanese and Osakan history on the inside. We headed back to the hotel, and discussed whether we were going to go out again tonight. In the end, we were both shattered, but decided to just go out for a few drinks, and be back reasonably early. We agreed that we would go to bars, but would not be going to any clubs.

We got to Zerro in Shinsaibashi at around 10pm. We were sitting next to a completely maggoted Canadian couple who were consistently sloppily making out with each other and making smacky smacky noises while doing so. I was nearly ready to leave and call it a night, but Woo decided we needed tequila shots. After we bombed them and another beer, the Canadians had gone, but we decided to go back to Cinquecento, where we had been the night before. We stayed there for a few drinks (including a Jagerbomb, which was Woo's idea also) and were beginning to push a little towards drunk.

When we left Cinquecento we really should have headed home, however we decided we would go to Sam and Daves, which is a club. I know this goes aganst a decision we had made only 3 hours earlier, but hey, thats just how we roll. Sam and Daves is apparently pretty rocking on a sunday night. We walked past some other club, and Woo decided we should try it out. It was 1000yen entry but you got a free drink. We went down into the basement where the club was and it was completely dead. We decided we would get our free drink, bomb it in one shot, then walk out. We figured this would be appropiately rude enough to let them know how unhappy we were with being charged 1000yen to enter an empty club. We bombed the drinks and left. Woo had ordered a Pina Colada, so he got to bomb that, while I simply had a bourbon and coke. We laughed ourselves silly as we drunkenly made our way to sam and daves.

It was 2000yen entry but you got two free drinks. We walked in and it had maybe thirty people inside. We got our free drinks and kept drinking. It had started to fill up a little and we started talking to (and buying drinks for) some girls at the bar. By this stage we were both completely leathered, so I dont remember their names. I do remember both me and woo dropping our drinks at some point, and not long after that I think the girls decided that two completely maggot gaijin are probably a bit too much effort. We decided to leave and got back to the hotel at around 3am.

If I could do anything other than just pass out, I'm sure I would have wondered how that night had just happened. We had just had a five day bender through three different Japanese cities.