Dream

(This is from some time ago. I found it in a notebook.)

Last night I had a weird dream, which is not unusual. What is unusual is that I remembered most of it.

Basically I was in a life raft with the 10th Doctor Who and Amy Pond/Karen Gillan (yes, mismatched). I do not remember the shipwreck. Promptly we washed up at a pier upon which sat a pub. The Doctor and Amy went off to park the life raft and I went in to get us some pints. It was unclear whether this pub was in England or on some mystery island, but they had Becks on tap and they accepted my HSBC Debit card. Osama Bin Laden was at a table remarking to his companions that he had been trying to get in contact with Julian Assange for years. He looked like an American actor whose name I have probably never known, dressed up as Osama.

At this point the 11th Doctor showed up in his TARDIS outside with another random fellow and I forced him to high five me. I think he was looking for the other Doctor. The bar lady gave me my pints and informed me that someone would be along shortly with the machine to get my PIN.

FIN

Activity

So, I'm sitting here on my couch in Amsterdam. It's a Thursday night and I'm wondering what to do with myself.

The other day I thought about how I hadn't updated my travel blog in ages, and I resolved to write an entry on the plane on the way back from Zurich. Unfortunately I forgot to charge my laptop battery before I left and I was damned if I was going to type up an entry on my iPhone, so I read an eBook instead.

Read "Machine of Death". It's good.

There has been a massive gap between the last post and this one, so I'm not sure if I should try to catch up or if I should just skip to now. I think I'll do St Anton now, since it's fresh in my mind, and maybe I can skip back to where I kick Justin's arse in go-karting at another time.

So the story, for me, really begins on Thursday night. Some of my Amsterdam friends and I went to see Tron: Legacy at the cinema. We were fully expecting it to be awful and our expectations were proved to be well founded. But seriously, have you watched the original recently? It's pretty awful too. It was pretty though.

Anyway after Tron finished Chloe and I decided to go for some drinks. I had had two cans in the cinema already (as one is allowed to in this great country) and we had a good chat and a bunch more. Around midnight we decided, like sensible people, that that* was enough for a school night and Chloe went home. I, however, had noticed that we were about two doors down from Nota Bene. This is a bar to which I was taken by a lovely Dutch bartender lady on my first night in Amsterdam. I haven't seen her since and I hoped I would run into her there. Amazingly, the bartender recognised me and gave me a free shot when I got in there. I made some new friends at the bar and a couple of hours later I staggered off home with about 2% of my brain functional.

The next thing I knew it was two o'clock the following afternoon. Thankfully I hadn't made any promises to deliver software development services that day, so I wasn't in trouble. I had fixed a friend's internet the previous evening and had been carrying my laptop around during the aforementioned events. I was extremely relieved to see it lying on my bedroom floor beneath yesterday's crumpled clothing. It was at about this point that I noticed the window had been open all night and that it was about two degrees outside. According to my flatmates I had left my bedroom door open too and so the whole lower floor of the partment was fairly well chilled. Sorry about that guys. This was clearly not my finest hour. Later I discovered that in my stupor I had scrawled a couple of fairly illegible lines from "Piano Man" on the whiteboard in the foyer of our building... only the whiteboard marker didn't work so I had - resourcefully I thought given my state and the hour - used the permanent marker that's in my laptop bag for labelling CDs. That stayed there a full week while I was in St. Anton and had to be removed with bathroom cleaner and a firm hand.

That evening, despite my better judgement, I went to Coco's to watch the rugby between England and Wales. Coco's is the Australian bar in Amsterdam and although I knew it was a really terrible idea given that I had to be up at 5 the next morning to get my flight to Zurich, there were going to be some cool people there and I thought knocking back a couple of Cooper's Pale Ales wouldn't hurt. I got home at one and completely failed to sleep at all between then and when I got up again at 4:30 to go to the airport. So that was the start of my holiday.

*Valid usage of the same word twice consecutively in two consecutive sentences. Do I get some sort of grammar award?

(Tr)Istanbul

(I'm posting these really close together, I know. It's because I write them offline and I forgot to upload them. If you're playing at home you'll want to read the other post first. :) )

Drivers in Turkey are insane. It doesn't matter how big the vehicle they're driving is, they'll dodge and weave like they're on a superbike. It's quite a thing to see. Anyway for the ride home from the airport we were in a mini bus, so we were at the upper end of the size range for suicidal vehicles and felt relatively safe.

Heather was clever enough to get us a hostel right in the middle of Sultanahmet, which is the most interesting part of Istanbul. It's got the palace and the blue mosque. There's another big mosque that I call the red mosque which is supposed to be the biggest or something, but for some reason we didn't go see that one. I liked to think the blue mosque and the red mosque would occasionally get some capture the flag action going between them. There are labyrinthine gardens and walls all over the place between them so it would be way cool.

There are two big bazaars in that part of Istanbul. The Grand Bazaar, which is full of clothes and jewellery and antiques, and the spice bazaar, which is full of ninjas, but you can't see them because they're hiding in the spices.

You have to haggle in the bazaars, which I'd never really done before except for when I bought Gus (the Hilux, for those not personally familiar with my last, most awesome, car). Heather was very good at it. She got a scarf down to 10 lira from like 35. I didn't do quite as well but it's hard to tell because I have a policy of never checking the price of something I've already bought somewhere else. I bought a wallet and a pair of sunnies and a leather jacket. I lost the sunnies two days later. I'm up to my fifth pair of sunnies this holiday.

Our hostel had a rooftop bar, and on the Sunday night there was a 15 lira barbecue up there. As is usually the case, it turned out that 90% of the hostel patrons were Australian. We made friends with a bunch of Brisbanians and had a lovely time.

After the food there was a belly dancer. She made her money by jiggling about, as you do, then doing some audience participation stuff which was pretty funny, then all but forcing us to jam notes into her outfit. Seriously, she was very insistent. She was, admittedly, very cute, so I'm not complaining, but since I didn't have any small notes it was probably the most expensive part of the evening.

After filling us with beer and lamb they piled us all in a bus and took us to the night life in Istanbul. The first place had a proper live band and played proper Turkish music. I liked it. I particularly liked the part where they sold me a triple scotch for 7 lira (5 bucks). The second place had a live band who played Turkish music until they realised we were all Aussies and then switched to some pretty awesome covers of English-lyrics songs. I ordered a Bloody Mary there but it was pretty awful. I think the tomato juice needed some extra salt or something. Or maybe it just had way too much alcohol in it. In retrospect, judging by the degree to which I was dancing like a spastic, I'm beginning to think it may have been the latter.

I'm getting bored now, so I'll have to write about the part where I totally kick Justin's arse at go-cart racing another time.

Exodus 2010

Last time I wrote one of these I was in Dublin. I think it was January 2008, two and a half years ago. This time I've just left Dublin on the train to Galway. I'm only doing it because there's nothing decent left to watch on my laptop and I forgot to bring a book.

Anyway, I suppose I should start at the start. The flight stopped in Singapore on the way over and I'd already exchanged all my Aussieland fun-bucks for pounds, so I had to pay for my beer with a fiver. The nice man gave me change in the form of a two Singapore dollar note. I still have it in my wallet. It occurs to me that it's not actually going to be enough to buy another beer on the return leg, whenever that may be.

I sat next to a lady from the Australian Women's Wheelchair Basketball team on the way over. Her name was Liesel I think. They were on their way to the world championships in Birmingham. I told them her I'd watch it on BBC 3 but I was in Turkey while it was on so I didn't. Sorry Liesel. So even in economy class there's a chance you'll sit next to some national sporting types on a QANTAS plane. Yay. Oh and A380s are awesome. You get laptop power even in economy and there's a camera on the tail so you can watch them land. I heard an Englishman whinging about the landing at Heathrow and quietly wondered how well he would do trying to land a small office block on a road without spilling everybody's tea. I suspect quite badly.

Upon landing in Heathrow I instantly felt at home. I think it was the long queue for immigration. Then I had to catch 3 trains and a bus to get back to Justin and Meri's in Herne Hill, which I did in record time despite some unexpected and unexplained tube stoppages along the way. You know you're a Londoner when the train slows down before Brixton and you think "wait a second it hasn't been long enough since Stockwell, we'll be sitting here a while".

Anyway Meri was home that day because an electrician came around to mend some lights. She had to stick around and couldn't go to the pub so I wandered up to Sainsbury's and got us some Pimm's and associated materials. When I came home I complained that the Sainsbury's in East Dulwich no longer has Tim Tams. At this point the electrician piped up and said "Meredith, I think I have to tell you my secret". Needless to say we tabled our Pimm's and awaited keenly. He did not disappoint. Turns out he used to be an actor living in Sydney, and he was the original Tim Tam genie. Sadly, though, he could not furnish us with Tim Tams any more than East Dulwich Sainsbury's, so we had to be content with our Pimm's and strawberries and brie.

I realise I've written nearly a page and I've only made it to the end of the first day, but it's a long way to Galway. :P

Now, I worked in Covent Garden for over a year. It's about 3 blocks away from the British Museum, but I only went once and it was near closing time so we only got to spend about 45 minutes there. I had one day in London to spare before Heather and I jetted off to Turkey, so I thought I'd start nice and early and get a full day of wanderin' in. It's amazing. If you haven't, see it. I particularly liked the clock room. There's this one clock with a ball bearing that keeps hopeless time but is totally cool. There are mummies and Rosetta Stones and all that too that you can see if you must.

My feet started to hurt after about 2 hours so I had to quit. I got myself a haircut, 'cos I needed one, and the extremely gay man that cut my hair also elected to trim my eyebrows. Nobody's ever done that before. I also bought some Doc Marten's to replace the ones I got just before I left, and had a sandwich at Earl's, which is the sandwich shop I used to go to when I worked in Covent Garden. I was disappointed though, because the soup of the day was Tomato, which is pretty much the only one I never liked.

That night I met up with Heather and Steve in King's Cross (or Islington, or wherever). They helped me remember how much better Czech beer is than anything we have in Australia. Honestly, I'd gone off beer a bit in Aus, but I could drink Budwar all day. (I'll be sinking a fair amount of Guinness in Galway tonight too!)

The next day I met up with Heather and did a bit of shopping, and then we went off to the airport and the real holiday started.

New Trip!

Well, I've started again. When I'm not having fun and I've got no Internet and no good book to read, I'll try to get some stories written down, mostly so I can remember them, but hopefully some of you will enjoy them too. :)

This blog will almost certainly move to my proper hosting in the next few weeks.

Athbhliain faoi Mhaise Duit (5 Jan '08)

G'day all,

It's that time again. I've been back on the road since just before Christmas so things are happening again. Still, better start with London...

So in the last email in late October I mentioned about the job I was pretty sure I was going to get in Brighton. Well, I got it, and I told the guy I'd have to think about it, because I didn't really want to move to Brighton for just the 2 months given the problems I'd have with travel and finding a lease that short. Two days later got offered an interview for a job paying twice as much in the city, went in, got told "we think you can do this" and then told them I was only looking for a short contract when we got down to business. They told me they'd get back to me and they eventually did, in mid-December when I simply couldn't leave RDP without getting sued or at the very least knowing I was a complete bastard. (I might be a sucker, I probably am, but at least I'm a sucker who doesn't fuck people over!) They were only offering a job up to the end of January anyway, because they'd found a permanent person to do the real work and just wanted someone in to "get the ball rolling".

Anyway, back in late October, I took the job, knowing full well it would be an hour's commute either way under ideal circumstances, and sometimes possibly up to twice that. Oh how wrong I was. Enter British Rail.

Now, on the day I'd gone down for the interview it had been a perfectly easy process. Get the train to East Croydon from East Dulwich, change and get the Brighton train, get off at Burgess Hill. However, on that occasion, I'd been told, "Just show up some time in the middle of the day. Give me a ring from the station and I'll pick you up."

This had afforded me the luxury of just asking the national rail web site what time it felt like getting me to Burgess Hill and following the appropriate instructions. However, in the mornings, the train timetable is different. Because of the added traffic they are far more likely to cancel a train that's running late, rather than just let it run its course, or at least cancel some stops. They had a particular trick at East Croydon of cancelling two stops in particular on the Brighton line: my one and the one after it. There are also some highly irregular train frequencies between stations like East Dulwich and East Croydon because the southern rail newtork in London looks from the sky like something you'd pull out of your plughole. I was never on time once and rarely arrived much before 10. (So, yes, same as Sydney, but for different reasons. :) )

Anyway, four days into working at Rugged Display Products in Burgess Hill, on the Tuesday (I started on a Thursday), I dilligently got the train at 7.30 to Tulse Hill to get the Brighton train, which is one of the irregular trains in the mornings that will take you direct to Burgess Hill. That was cancelled. There is one more Brighton train but it's not until 8:47 and it doesn't stop at Burgess Hill anyway, and the next train to East Croydon was 20 minutes later, so I had to wait for that and then get off and change. They cancelled my stops on the next Brighton train so I waited, then they cancelled them again on the next one, so I decided to get it to the closest station I could which was Haywards Heath. When I got there I got off and waited 20 minutes for the next train, which I walked onto before being informed that because this train was now so late it wouldn't stop at Burgess Hill and I had to get off again. 25 minutes later I had my train. At 10:45 I walked into the boss's office and informed him that it had taken me 4 hours to get there that morning and that I wanted to finish the first, week-long project and then quit. He said "Why don't you just work from home? You just need to come in one or two days a week and be finished by Christmas." So I did.

Now, I was doing database design 5 years ago, so this weren't exactly a challenge, and it's not the best paid job I've applied for (but it's still pretty good), but it was nice and cruisy and paid the bills. It also made it so some days I could just bugger off into the city and do my own stuff. I wanted something nice and short so I could go travelling again sooner rather than later. I was hoping for February, but Christmas suited me fine. The guy is full of ideas though I'm sure I'll get a few more calls from him.

So, when I wasn't in the office, which was most days, I was sitting on the couch at Justin's with no shoes on in front of the fireplace, with my guitar and juggling balls close at hand for when I got bored every 10 minutes, clicking away at my laptop while it dutifully checked my Gmail or Facebook or smh.com.au, or, very occasionally, did some work. Since it was a nice easy database project it didn't take me nearly 8 hours a day to get it all done, and one week I just took Thursday and Friday off completely to go and hang out with Centine when she came to London.

I ended up staying with Justin and Meredith for the whole time. I looked at lots of other places but every time I found one I could get enthusiastic about it wasn't given to me. The same thing happened in Sydney. There's a lot of competition. Justin and Meredith were supremely kind to me and I can't thank them enough, but I still wish I'd done the whole share-house thing. I'll have another crack at it when I get back.

Various people came and visited London while I was there, and I visited a few people I've met along the way and some I knew from Sydney. I had bangers and mash with Laura from Sydney, watched the Guy Fawke's Day fireworks with Fergal from Ireland (whom I met in Spain), went up the tower of London and on the London Eye with Centine of previously emailed fame, saw the finals of the UK World Breakdancing competition with Justin and Meredith, and repeatedly got drunk with the girls from the old Gladesville posse. Andrea, with whom I went to uni, found me on Facebook and I've done a couple of cool things with her. Namely salsa dancing and going to a tiny little jazz pub in Covent Garden where a bunch of men from the 40s played a bunch of awesome jazz music from the 40s while a girl from the 40s sang extremely well.

Now, frankly, the salsa club was full of people who knew what they were doing and that intimidated the hell out of me. They had lessons at the beginning to combat this understandably common issue, so I signed up for that. When the time came to partner up, Andrea had very helpfully found two attractive young ladies who didn't have partners for me and her friend Gareth, and while Gareth was clever enough to notice Andrea telling us to get the hell over there and act swiftly, I somehow ended up with a fat old lady. Go me. Anyway after the lesson was over the intimidating people who could dance got on the floor and me and Gareth, barring a few breaks to dance with Andrea, got on the booze. I feel I must rise to the challenge though, and shall try again at a later date.

In early November I got an email from the hostel I'd stayed at in Amsterdam saying they'd give me a free night if I stayed over Christmas, and given that I had no other plans I thought that was a pretty good idea. I put the deposit down and when the 22nd of December rolled around, off I went for a week in the 'Dam. When Centine came a week or so later (in November) she graciously offered for me to stay at her place and do New Year's Eve there as well.

Now, the hostel in Amsterdam at Christmas was not like I'd thought. I had had visions of a bunch of interesting lone travellers from all over the world who were so far away from their families that they weren't seeing them, and long conversations about the significance of Christmas and religion and such over the odd spliff and a few beers at the bar. What I found was a bunch of couples speaking foreign languages to nobody but themselves, small groups of fresh-out-of-high-school Americans who went all deer-in-the-headlights when a stranger appeared within 3 metres of them, and a guy from Melbourne called Adam and a yank called Keith sitting in the corner doing power bongs in between games of pool. You can guess which group I attached myself to. The hostel put on Christmas dinner for us but apart from that it was a blurry, fairly boring week in which I did a lot of reading and sleeping (which I really didn't mind at all).

After three nights in Utrecht with Centine it was New Year's Eve - "Oud en Nieuw", and Centine had found a nice house party for us to go to. We spent the afternoon with some people in her building who were going to Amsterdam for the night. All was well, and we were just about to head off when we figured out it was going to be quite a long way to go, and we had only one bike. We actually organised another one but for some reason I said "hey we could just go to Amsterdam with them".

Now, New Year's Eve is a tricky thing. In my experience it is a choice between going to a club party, getting overcharged and completely blind and then waking up the following afternoon wondering if it was all worth it, or going to a house party, chilling out with music you choose at a volume you choose, drinking cheap booze but rarely to great excess, in the company of people of reasonably similar temperament, and waking up in the following afternoon thinking "my head hurts a bit and I didn't score but that was pretty cool". For this reason I invariably favour the house party. On the odd occasion, like when it's the year 2000 or I'm in an unfamiliar hemisphere, I feel the need to go out and "do something". This was an odd occasion.

Every street in Amsterdam is filled with people on New Year's Eve. The roads are like the Harbour Bridge at 6 o'clock and the footpaths - all the footpaths - are like Olympic Park station just after the Big Day Out has finished. Moving is not fun and the best idea is to get inside. Where do you think the Americans we were with wanted to go inside to? A coffee shop. Ahem.

Three hours later we decided it was nearly midnight so we'd better go to the Dam square to watch the show. This was when we encountered our first transit problems involving fireworks. You see, in Amsterdam there are state-organised fireworks for midnight but there are hooligan-organised fireworks all night long. You're walking along and suddenly see sparks at your feet and the hooligan Moses sits back and chuckles while the sea of people parts before his usually quite big firework goes off. There were proper loud, big fireworks they were setting off, not just little showers or bungers or wimpy little ball throwers. I've got video which I'll YouTube when I get a decent net connection. It was amazing, I'll give it that, but it was amazing like a car crash, not amazing like a supernova or say, Thriller. That's a night I won't forget in a hurry, so I guess mission accomplished, but I wouldn't recommend Amsterdam on NYE to anyone who's not planning to drop acid and run around with a lighter and a backpack full of bombs. To top it all off, Tineke, who was supposed to be going to Amsterdam but got stuck at the station in Utrecht, had a fantastic night and could have shared it with us, had we followed our original plans. I pretty much wore my not happy face all the way to Dublin after that.

So now to current events. I arrived here in Dublin yesterday afternoon and did a little pub crawl on my own. The first pub, the one attached to the hostel (Gogarty's), charged me €5 for a Guiness. It was a decent Guiness though and there were live musicians playing some good Irish tunes so I happily downed it and moved on. The second place, down the road, charged me €5.50 for a Guniess and something like €9 for a mixed grill which consisted of many lovely foodstuffs. It was a nice little bar and I got to watch the tourists, and the odd Dubliner, in Temple Bar going about their business through the window while I munched and imbibed. (Temple Bar is the name of the district in which me and a goodly portion of the night-life are stationed.)

The sun wasn't quite down yet so I thought I'd go for an explore and got a map back at the hostel. After a bit of a walk and a Kilkenny for €5.75 I ended up back in Temple Bar at the Temple Bar where it was €5.50 for a Guiness again but it was full of interesting looking people. I met some youngish Northern Irelander lads while attempting to bum a ciggy with which to accompany my Guiness. The Alpha lad, pretending to be drunker than he was, led us around the bar striking up conversations with most anyone, but particularly the groups of ladies. We had a few good chats but most of them ended when Alpha Lad went a bit too far with his suggestiveness and scared them off. I'm pretty satisfied with last night. It seems like a fitting intro to Ireland.

Yesterday morning I rose late, as is my wont, and breakfasted in a nice little sandwich shop near the River Liffey, which runs through Dublin. After a bit of a wander around I took a tour bus to Malahide Castle, where the Talbot family lived for 800 years before something or other happened and Esther moved to Tasmania (truly) and sold the place to the goverment. The bus took the leisurely route back down the North coast and various photographs were taken as per the modus operandi for tour busses. Had a few beers with some American girls from the hostel and then in the morning, after possibly the best toasted sandwich in the world*, I flew back to London.

I'm staying with Andrea for the weekend. We're going to Zoe's birthday tonight and I've got a few other things to do before I set off again. (For instance, get my flaky laptop fixed or replaced.) Next intended destination is Edinburgh, and then, hopefully skiing in Chamonix in France. I'm really looking forward to that as I'm sure you can imagine. I want to go back to Ireland and see some of the other cities like Galway and Cork and I think I'm gonna tag along with Andrea when she goes skiing in Slovenia in February. (I like skiing. :) )

I bought an Asus EeePC today, but I don't think I can keep it. It was £278 with the 1Gb RAM upgrade. It's the coolest thing you've ever seen but it's just not what I should be spending my money on right now... so I'm thinking I'll get a Nokia internet phone with GPS... because it has Bluetooth and GPS and is therefore a more justifiable expense.

I'm admittedly a little bit homesick. I want to be able to wear a T-shirt at 3 in the morning and be forced out of bed at 9 because it's so damn hot. I want to know that all I have to do to have a fun night is ring 3 people and find a pack of cards. I want to know where the bacon and Milo are kept in the supermarket and I want the supermarkets to stock proper bacon and Milo. But that's after two months of replenishing cash supplies in London and then a weird-ass week in Holland. Things are already looking up, so it's due to pass any day now.

I hope you're all well. I'm vaguely aware that the rubbish weather is gone (?) in Sydney and I hope that continues (... you bastards). I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas and New Year's and that 2008 turns out great for you all.

If there's anyone I've left off the mailing list that anyone thinks should be there, feel free to forward this and if you send me their email I'll add them.

Stan out!

* Bread, bacon, coleslaw, tomato, bread, mayo, chicken, bread.

Descent (12 Oct '07)

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

What's Hello in Hungarian? - Part 2 (26 Sep '07)

It's 10 in the morning now, I've had no sleep 'cos a guy in my room snores like an angry bulldog trying to eat a rock and there's nobody interesting here, so I'm finishing the email before I go to meet Wendy for lunch.

So I left Barcelona and cruised back up to Tourouzelle to see David and Nancy Wood. They've got a great place, three floors in a tiny little village that makes wine. It was great to see them and to have a bit of a relax after all the craziness of the previous weeks. I was supposed to go to Paris that night to meet Elodie, but I wasn't feeling very well. I'd gotten up late and didn't feel like a 7 hour drive to Paris, so I told her I'd see her on Saturday. She told me she had been planning to take me to see the rugby with some of her friends.

Hmmm, watching the rugby in Paris with a bunch of Parisian girls, or reading my book in Tourouzelle.

So then it occurred to me that I could probably just take the car back to Europcar in Toulouse and then catch a train. I called Europcar and apparently I had to ask the Biarritz office if that was OK but they were at lunch until 2, so I had to wait. David made me lunch and I raced off at 3 for Toulouse. I made it to Toulouse by 5 (diesel Renaults start to have trouble at about 185km/h), but by the time I'd gotten to the front of the ticket queue I'd missed the last fast train to Paris by 15 minutes.

So I'm standing there in Toulouse at half past five with no car and nowhere to stay, so I called Pauline again and she said "Sure you can stay! We can go out and watch the rugby!". So all in all not a bad result. We went to a park, Prairie des Filtres, next to the Garonne river, where they'd set up a big screen for the rugby and along with 10,000 Frenchmen we watched the first half of the rugby. It was massively overcrowded so we went to a bar for the second half and met a bunch of Pauline's friends. It was a good game, good company and good beer, so I had a great night! Thanks Pauline!

Thrilled to be rid of the Euro-eating car, I set off in the (late) morning for the station and jumped on a TGV for Paris. Those things are cool. It took a bit more than 5 hours. I had two seats to myself so as I was sitting there reading I'd periodically hear the engines whirr up and think "Oooh! It's a fast bit!" and sit plastered to the window to watch the world fly past at 320km/h. It's great going through France at ground level. With the added bonus of actually taking you into the centre of Paris, not some airport an hour away, it's a good deal.

Elodie was kind enough to pick me up from the station, which I thought was fantastic given that driving in Paris is a nightmare. We had a picnic on the Pont des Arts, which spans the Seine between the Louvre and the Institut de France. You get an awesome view of the middle of the city and the lights and boats on the Seine. It's a popular spot on a Saturday night, so there were lots of people doing the same thing as us. After that we dumped my stuff at Elo's and headed out to the Frog & Princess for some more drink and a bit of a dance. That was an awesome night. Thanks Elodie!

On Sunday I went to a picnic with Elo and some of her family and friends in a park outside Paris of which I've forgotten the name. I got to play a guitar for the first time in 3 weeks which was very therapeutic. Afterwards we went up to Scare Coeur, to see the view, and sat on the steps while some guy did a weird show inside this little curtain thing in front of the view of Paris. I have no friggin idea what that was all about. Some kind of interpretive dance thing, I guess. It was spectacularly underwhelming, in stark contrast to the view which is beautiful. We went to a bar in Montmartre and happened upon some more of Elo's friends, and I strained my French to follow what they were talking about in between the cool music and the beer. We had dinner with some friends who lived in a flat directly opposite the Sexodrome in the red light district, just down the road from the Moulin Rouge. (I have photos) They played me some French rap and good fun was generally had by all.

When I got up on Monday I was feeling pretty lazy, 'cos I still wasn't feeling well. I knew I had to do some shopping so I went off for a wander around Paris. I've been before, and I know I'll go back again (I need more French practice!), so I wasn't too fussed about seeing all the sights properly and once the rain stopped I spent a goodly proportion of the afternoon reading in the park. I'd left my camera at home, too, which I didn't realise until I was getting out of the Metro near the Louvre. I bought 4 pairs of socks, some shampoo, a razor and some toothpaste and my Paris shopping experience was complete.

That night Elo and I went to see a movie called 2 Days in Paris which is about a very American guy and a very Parisian girl trying to have a holiday in Paris. It was a good movie. I managed to decipher most of the French, more than the American guy in the movie at least, but it was about 60% in English anyway. Nevertheless, I think Elodie and I saw entirely different movies that night... I might have to watch it again when my French has improved.

On Tuesday, after packing, and brunch in front of the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs Elysées, I flew off to Budapest and met Dad and Wendy for dinner. We had some pasta priced especially for tourists. The currency here is Hungarian Florints, which are alternately abbreviated as HUF or ft. My brain always translates that as feet, so I'm not fighting it. The Sprite I'm drinking as I write this cost me 195 feet, or 195 huffs, depending on how you look at it.

Today (it's now 11:41pm) I met Wendy down at the Central Market Hall and we had goulash for lunch. I had a fank donut for dessert and then we met Dad and wandered up to the national gallery at the castle, which has a gorgeous view and some excellent paintings. I have a thousand photos which will eventually materialise online.

Budapest is a gorgeous city. I haven't really done its night life, and I'm not really expecting to because the hostel is completely devoid of interesting people for some reason. I'm understandably disappointed about that and if I get to come back with some hooligans one day I'll jump at the opportunity. But anyway, yeah, the place is beautiful. It's touted in all the guide books as the hub of Central Europe and you can see it's capably rising to that challenge. Just about everyone speaks at least a bit of English and even those that don't are pretty good at doing the whole sign language communication thing. It's fairly clean, although there are construction and restoration projects going on everywhere. It's great at giving the tourists places to put their disposable cash and on the surface it's got a pretty friendly vibe even if the metro is filled, like any city, with solemn faces.

In next week's instalment: Skydiving in Switzerland.

Hope you're all keeping well wherever you are, and send me stories! Not having stories is no excuse! Have stories! As you can see, even stories about parking fines can be quite interesting.

A la prochaine fois,

Tristan

What's Hello in Hungarian? (26 Sep '07)

Hello again,

My records tell me the last email was nigh on 2 weeks ago... doesn't feel like it! I'm sitting in the strangely empty common room of the hostel in Budapest after researching skydiving in Switzerland on the surprisingly excellent wifi. I've gotten a lot of praise for the previous two emails, and Wendy's pointed out that they're a good reference for me, too, when I want to remember what I've done, so bear with me if I go into too much detail.

Actually I've just read this one back and it's pretty long, so like... get a coffee or something.

SO... let's see... I was hung over in Spain last time, right? Where did I go from that...

Annie and I watched movies with our whiskey hangovers for most of the afternoon, then she went off to Barcelona and I sat around on the balcony with the other backpackers, who were apparently also all nursing hangovers. They kicked us off the balcony at about 11.30, which they do, so we took our booze down to the beach for a while, and eventually went off to bed.

On the Saturday a large group of us spent pretty much all day on the beach. I didn't do any more surfing, unfortunately, mainly because there were only two places where the waves were surfable and they were packed with people already. Not, I thought, the place for a beginner. But I finally got some reading done and we all had a good yarn. Periodically one of us would wander off to get a kebab from the little man on the corner who didn't seem to speak any English or much Spanish, but who made a good kebab at the right price.

After a delicious burger at the Irish pub around the corner... Oh! The burger! They had two burgers on the menu, right, one with beef, lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, ketchup and mayo (so your standard Whopper formula). The other had beef, bacon, egg and cheese. So I'm like, "I want a number one but with bacon and egg on it". Pete and Fergal also saw the genius of my plan and with the help of Fergal's Spanish skills we managed to get the bartender to make it happen. They didn't even charge us extra. They also had Murphy's Red Ale on tap, which was the best beer I've had all holiday. I had 2 pints. That there was a memorable meal.

So, after that (around 8) we did the whole backpackers on the balcony thing until we got kicked off at 11 again. The thing about San Sebastian, and I think the rest of Spain, is that you eat dinner at 10 to 11ish, and you go out at like 2 in the morning, so since we were all Aussies and liked our early dinners the balcony was always the place to be between 8 and 11, then the beach to finish whatever takeaway alcohol we had. Later that night we all went out to a night club, where all you had to was say "Olga's Place" at the bar and they gave you 2 Amstels for the price of 1. At about 3.30, upon realising that there were no girls left in the bar Darren, Fergal, Person-Whose-Name-I've-Forgotten and I buggered off in search of some. We found heaps, but none of them spoke English. :(

The next day, Sunday, was about 30 degrees, so it was another beach day. We were all pretty screwed from the night before anyway so we didn't really mind. I wanted a big dinner so I made myself an enormous bowl of pasta and ate in on the balcony. It took me a bottle of wine and a litre of beer to get through it. I had to go upstairs twice to reheat it.

So Monday morning I was sitting around drinking an extremely strong coffee and eating Nutella on toast, pondering my next move. Most of my friends were due to leave that night so I was determined to as well. The plan was to meet up with them again in Barcelona on Wedndesday and go to a Champion's League soccer game. I knew I wanted to visit Toulouse and Tourezelle so I decided I'd rent a car for a few days and cruise through the South of France. It seemed like a good idea so I did a bit of research, discovered the cheapest way was to hire the car from Biarritz in France, just over the border to the North from San Sebastian, and take it back to Paris. It was the same price to hire it for 4 days as it was for a week, so I hired it for a week.

I booked the thing, got myself a bus ticket to Biarritz and went off. I had no accommodation for that night, because I reckoned I could probably drive somewhere and get some, or maybe just sleep in the car. When I got to Biarritz it was 4:15 and I was a bit concerned that the car rental place would shut (I knew it shut at 5:00) before I managed to get to it. It was supposed to be at the railway station and so I got a map and set off on foot. The street didn't look very long on the map so I thought it would be cool. At 4:35, when I realised I wasn't even half way and I was drenched in sweat with my 35kg of luggage, I was more than a little concerned. Thankfully I happened upon a bus going in that direction and it managed to get me there a bit after 4:45.

I found the Europcar at the station not just closed but completely empty of furniture and with bare walls. A sign on the door informed me that it was only open from May to September (?!?) and that I had to call the Downtown office or the Airport office. I couldn't get through to either of them until about 4:55, by which time I was quite anxious. Somebody finally answered and said they'd come to get me. They did, and I got myself a 6-speed diesel Renault Megane, which was pretty cool, but didn't have sat-nav or any kind of MP3 capabilities.

The guy was nice enough to give me a map of France, and I headed back into the town of Biarritz... no, wait, I drove halfway to Bayonne, realised I was going the wrong way, turned around, and with only one incident of driving on the wrong side of the road, managed to get into Biarritz, park and find an Irish pub with which to calm my nerves. There was a nice Kiwi girl behind the bar, who spoke absolutely no French at all, so we chatted for a while and I translated for her on the rare occasion that a customer came in who didn't speak English. I'd been to an Internet cafe to look for accomodation, found none, and she'd informed me that there was a surf tournament on and that she herself, who'd only been there 4 days, was in the camp ground out of town.

So, given the options of Bordeaux, 2 hours away, Toulouse, 2.5 hours away or San Sebastian, 40 minutes away by car, I opted to go back to Olga's. It turned out to be a great decision because I got into a game of Texas Hold 'Em with some Irishmen (thanks for the chips, Tineke!) and won the entire pot of 25 Euros.

I woke in the morning, checked that the car was OK, bought some blank CDs, burned a couple, packed my stuff and set off to dump it in the car, which wasn't there. In fact, no cars were there. I stood there agape for a few moments before having the following dialogue with a guy who would have placed well in a Mario lookalike competition.

Mario (pointing at the empty space): "You?"

Me: "Yeah! I was here like half and hour ago and it was still there!"

Mario: "Police... pffft!" (points off into to distance)

Me: "Oh... Where are the police?" (doing my best "Where are the police" hand gestures)

Mario gives me the universal "I don't know" hand gesture.

Me (pointing at my watch): "How long? When?"

Mario holds up ten fingers and says "dis" or whatever the Spanish for "ten" is.

So I drag my suitcase back to Olga's and explain to Olga, whose English isn't too great, what's happened. She figured it out, told me where to get my car and 30 minutes and 150 Euros later I had my car back. Pauline sent me a message that it was OK to stay with her in Toulouse that night so off I went.

The South of France is beautiful, even the bits right next to the motorway. I thoroughly enjoyed driving through it, but I really wished I had a GPS so that I could take some side roads, go exploring and not get lost. I enjoyed it even more once I found the cruise control (which I set at roughly 2 million km/h).

Toulouse is a very pretty city. They call it "la ville rose" because most of the buildings are made out of pink-red bricks, not stone like most of the cities in France. It's on the banks of the Garonne river and right at the moment they've got coloured lights decorating the buildings and bridges the city. It's the fourth largest city in France. Pauline took me out for dinner and we headed back to her awesome flat, which is nice and big and in the middle of the city. There's a soap shop out the front that blows bubbles at you.

After nerding it up in an internet cafe in the morning we had some excellent crêpes for lunch and I headed off for my Champion's league game in Barcelona, which turned out to be sold out. I met up with Darren, Liz, Pete and Fergal anyway and we watched it in an Irish pub before hitting the town in Barcelona.

Barcelona's great. I wish I'd spent more time there, but was there for a week in 2005 so it's not so bad. I should mention at this point that the car had now cost me over 80 Euros in tolls, 50 Euros in petrol, 50 Euros in parking, 150 Euros in fines and it was 190 Euros in the first place. So, like, what, 520 Euros in 2 days. Thats AU$845. I didn't get lost, I didn't mind the drive (though I would have liked to explore a lot more), but Jesus Christ I wanted to get rid of that thing.

Holy shit it's 2:30 in the morning... to be continued.

Hola (14 Sep '07)

Hello again!

Let's see if I can still write... I spent a lot of last night in a whiskey bar and I'm not fully recovered yet!

Now I think the last email left off just after Holland. So, London!

I did a lot of sightseeing in London for the first couple of days. I went into the Tower Bridge and Westminster Abbey, took lots of photos of Big Ben and the houses of parliament, Buckingham Palace and Picadilly Circus, went to the Dali exhibition in County Hall, ate a steak and ale pie in a pub in the West End, got offered drugs in Camden and just generally wandered and tubed all over the place.

London is a busy city. It's a lot more businesslike than the other cities I've been to. I got the sense that important things were going on all the time.

On the weekend I Jus, Meri and I went to the Isle of Wight for Bestival, which was quite an experience. We saw the Chemical Brothers on Friday night and the Beastie Boys on Saturday and they were both awesome. Chem Bros had an awesome light show and Beasties just got up and jammed like hell. You were supposed to dress up for the festival and English blokes, apparently, really really like to dress up as girls. There were a few themes suggested for costumes, pirates being the major one. English girls, apparently, make very attractive pirates. Unfortunately I comprehensively failed to... um... pillage their booty. I think I can do a pretty convincing salsa now, though.

So, all in all, the London experience was a good one. I offloaded a whole lot of stuff at Justin's so I'm a bit more fuel-efficient now. I've got an English bank account, a bunch of recruiters hunting down jobs for me and an appointment to get my National Insurance number.

I wasn't sure where to go from England. I was half tempted to go back to Amsterdam, but I decided it was a better idea to expand my horizons a bit and San Sebastian, Spain, eventually won the day. It was definitely the right decision, even if I do need a new liver.

I've met some great people, mostly Australians. I had my first surfing experience yesterday. I managed to get up a couple of times. I went about 10 metres and had no control whatsoever but it was totally cool. As soon and the sun comes out again, and my internal organs have stopped being angry with me, I'm definitely having another go.

The hostel is great. It's a 2 minute walk from the beach, there's a huge balcony where everyone hangs out in the afternoons and it's full of cool people. It's called Olga's Place and I highly recommend it.

Last night I met Annie from Oregon and after some beer and tapas we ended up in an awesome whiskey bar and drank too much whiskey. It's a quarter past 2 now and I think she's still out cold.

Right! That's about it. I'm off to find somewhere warm and cosy to die.

Hope you're all happy and well.

T