Right. Episode 4: A New Hope or is it Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back. Depends on how you count the Budapest emails... either one fits the bill.
Anyway I believe I left off complaining about how there wasn't anyone to hang out with in Budapest. That remained true until the last night I was there, and then a bunch of people rocked up and we went out for some drinks and dancing. I pretty much decided once and for all that I'm no good at picking up on dance floors, especially girls who only speak Hungarian. Anyway that was a good night (the Whoppers with Cheese in Budapest are the best I've eaten). Apart from that went to the "House of Terror" with Dad and learned about the ridiculously horrible time the Hungarian people had during the 20th century at the hands of the Communists and the Fascists. It's a wonder there aren't pitchfork-and-flaming-torch shops lining the streets Seriously.
On the last day Wendy and I explored St. Stephen's basilica, which is gorgeous, and the Hungarian Parliament house, which is spectacular beyond words. I'm having trouble expressing exactly how impressive the parliament house really is, so I'll get some photos up on Flickr and let them speak for themselves. Suffice to say that if it was an ice-cream flavour it would be Awesome with Chocolate Chips. After that we did a bus tour and my camera worked hard to capture the beauty of Budapest. Once again, the photos will tell the story.
Now as I alluded to last time, I was growing weary of merely inspecting and drinking things. I had decided to do something, and that that thing would be jumping out of a plane. I'm pretty sure most of you will have heard me talking about doing that before. I nearly did it last time I was in Byron Bay. Anyway it turns out that Interlaken in Switzerland is pretty much the skydiving capital of Europe, and, as luck would have it, Geneva was the cheapest place to fly to from Budapest except for Frankfurt. Sausages are not high on my list of priorities.
Coincidentally, Tineke was doing her aforementioned clever, important, free work with the UN Human Rights council in Geneva, so I dropped in on her for the weekend. We ferried across lake Geneva in the spray of le jet d'eau, crashed a student picnic with one of Tin's friends in the park, met some people and descended a mountain in the afternoon. We'd crossed the French border (which sits roughly between the supermarket and the pharmacy in Geneva), cable car-ed up nearly to the top, walked the rest of the way up, and then wandered down what was probably a mountain bike trail to the bottom of the cable car. That took about three hours all up. The Thai food and beer we consumed back in Geneva was richly deserved. We rounded out the night by wearily attending a student party in one of the bits of Geneva that's not really called Geneva, until we'd run out of alcohol tolerance and conversation.
Sunday was a much needed rest day. We watched Scrubs and had chicken burgers for dinner and off I went to Interlaken in the morning.
Interlaken's about 3 hours by train from Geneva, and you get to go through some cool countryside on the way. The main language also changes from French to German. Once you get there you're in a town with big snow covered mountains on the horizon, beautiful old Swiss buildings, shops selling Swiss clocks everywhere, cows in a paddock in the middle of town, and a Hooters on the main strip. There's also the odd paraglider meandering across the sky above it all. If you go to Switzerland, go there. I'm pretty sure I'll be going back to ski in the winter.
Balmer's, the hostel I stayed in, has two happy hours. One in the upstairs bar from 6 to 7, the other in the downstairs bar from 9 to 10. At these times one may purchase one drink and receive two. On the first night I took advantage of both of these far more than I should've, given that I'd booked skydiving for the morning. We played loads of cards and trivial pursuit, which was to be a theme of my time in Interlaken.
I got up, took some paracetemol, drank a Powerade and then began refilling my drink bottle with water for pretty much the rest of the day. The bus to skydiving got stopped by a herd of cattle with huge bells around their necks. Marci and Dave from the hostel were jumping with me. I had already established my pool-playing supremacy over Dave the previous night and Marci had met Dave on the train, so we were all in the same group, one of the last of the day. That have us plenty of time to watch what was happening, check out the plane and the parachutes and play presidents and assholes on the tarmac. I got a bit of string to tie my camera to myself. I was apparently allowed to take it up with me. Unfortunately I got the low battery light just as I was getting in the plane so I don't have as many photos from the sky as I would've liked.
So yeah, we got in, flew over the gorgeous Swiss scenery for 15 minutes, up to 13,000 feet and then jumped out of the fucking plane. You spend about 40 to 50 seconds in free-fall. It's like floating on a cushion of air. Because you're so high up it doesn't really look like the ground is getting any closer for ages. The only way you can tell you're going down is by deafening roar of the wind. It's amazing when there's nothing in your field of vision but the ground, and you're literally just flying there. It's Google Earth in infinite detail. Then Dave (instructor Dave, not hostel Dave) pulled the rip cord and we jerked up into vertical (which didn't hurt like I thought it would). Then you spend about 5 minutes drifting down to the ground. Dave pointed things out and I went "Wow" because I was hung over and my conversation circuits hadn't powered up properly. I whipped out the camera and took the four or five remaining shots it had left in it and then settled in to enjoy the rest of the ride back to Earth. It starts to get more fun when you're close enough that the ground is approaching quickly. The whole thing is awesome and I highly recommend it, especially over the alps.
Having befriended some fellow skydivers we headed back to town and had Chinese before hitting the downstairs bar at the hostel, where the skydiving instructors were drinking. If you gave them $200 they'd chuck an extra guy out with a camera strapped to his head and make you a DVD of your jump. I didn't get one, but Marci and Dave did and when I saw theirs I really wanted one. So basically, when I go back in winter, I'm doing it from a chopper instead of a plane and this time I'm getting a DVD and charging my camera battery beforehand!
The next day I thought I needed a rest, so after second breakfast with my fellow skydivers I went for a mountain bike ride around the lake and then settled in to read in the sun for a while. Dean the Kiwi wanted to play pool though, so that didn't last long, especially since he was good and I had to defend my honour. More drinking, cards, etc and then I was supposed to go canyoning the following day, but it got rained out. After another morning of reading and playing pool Chad from New Jersey and I hired scooters and cruised up to Grindelwald in the drizzle. There are some cool photos of that too.
I will upload these photos I mention. I don't want to attach them all to a mass email and I haven't decided how to best organise them, but rest assured they'll show up eventually in some form.
The next day we actually did go canyoning. Canyoning basically involves starting at the top of a canyon with a river flowing through it and then jumping down the waterfalls, or sliding down the rocks into the pools below. http://www.outdoor-interlaken.ch/en/summer/canyoning/. We did the Chli Schlieren canyon which I found out later is meant to be for "confident, athletic people". Confident I can do, but athletic?
Anyway it was, in the parlance of out times, totally kickass. It was much better value than skydiving because it lasted four hours instead of 30 minutes and cost 180 francs instead of 380. I was a bit nervous for the first two jumps but after that I was fine. The water was absolutely freezing but under a full wetsuit, two extra wetsuit jackets, a warm jacket and a life jacket I was pretty warm except for my hands and my head. I don't know if there's anywhere in Australia you can do this but it's wicked and I'd do it again and again.
Friday was another rest day and Saturday was dedicated to rugby. I am still kicking myself for missing the New Zealand game because I forgot to set my alarm before going for a snooze. We'd been playing drinking games after the Aussie match and I thought I needed to recover a bit before the next match. I still don't know what happened to Jess but I cursed myself all the way back to Geneva.
After a quick dinner with Tineke in Geneva I flew back to London and managed to get to London Bridge station at about 12:30am, whereupon things got interesting. The number 40 bus I had intended to get doesn't have a night bus, and the last one had gone about half an hour earlier. I didn't have my London maps so I had to ask for directions. I thought I knew what I was doing but I thought I'd check with some of the Underground cleaning staff, who were within earshot inside the closed, locked tube station. Turns out I was exactly right but a homeless guy overheard me asking for directions and offered to escort me to the bus. I declined, but he followed anyway. We got to the (wrong) bus stop and he demanded 20 pounds for his efforts. I protested that I was only just off the plane and I didn't have any pounds, but he persisted and got abusive, so I finally gave in and gave him a loose 10 I knew I had in my pocket. He was satisfied and wandered off while I went down to the right bus stop. I didn't really know where I was, so when I thought we'd gone about the right distance I asked the driver where to change for the number 12 and he said the next stop. He was right, but he put me right in the middle of Peckham, which I now know is a pretty dangerous area at the best of times, and especially at 1 in the morning on Monday. If I'd gone two more stops I could've still got the 12 but there'd have been no-one around. Anyway within about 2 minutes of getting off the bus a guy with a gold tooth tells me:
"Don't worry, I'm not going to bover ya, but 'av ya go' any chaynge?"
So, says I, with a generous helping of Aussie geniality, "Nah mate, I'm just off the plane from Geneva and I've only got Francs."
"Jus' check mate, jus' check."
"Seriously man, I've just gotten off the plane and I know I've got no pounds."
"I'll get me knife out" as he shows me his knife under his hoodie.
"Fuck" says I, begrudgingly pulling out my wallet and handing over my remaining 25 pounds.
So then I spent a nervous 8 minutes more waiting for the bus and after changing bus again at Dulwich library, begging the drivers for a free ride, I managed to make it to Justins. It wasn't until I got up the next day that I realised how lucky I was to get away with my passport, laptop, cameras and health.
So I was a bit pissed off with London after that, having travelled all over Europe without a problem, and I was half tempted to just try to get a work visa in Holland and hopefully get some work over there. I love Holland, I cannot stress that enough. I'd happily do Switzerland or France too but I think I'll work on my French first. But I've had some great fun over the last few days in London so I'm gonna stick with it.
My days have been mostly in front of my laptop (with a cold) touching up my CV and applying for jobs (and, inevitably, wasting time on Facebook, Google Talk and MSN). I did my interview for the National Insurance number and that'll arrive in the next couple of weeks. I've just had a call from a guy about a job near Brighton about writing a database system for a company that makes funky touchscreen gadgets and I'm pretty sure I'm going to get it. It means I won't be living in London and for 20 pounds an hour in a company that makes cool stuff I think I can probably handle that.
Apart from that I've had a curry in Brick Lane with Zoe, a pie at London Bridge, been to the Tate Modern and gone rock climbing with Zoe's boyfriend Jason and his mates. So it's been a good week and that call about the job has just about made my night.
The travel portion of the holiday is now over for the moment, so the emails won't be as long or as interesting. I'm sure I'll be doing some weekend holidays though. I've still got to check out Dublin, Edinborough, Manchester, Bordeaux, Brussels, Amsterdam...
Have fun everyone, be excellent.
Tristan
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