Sunday, December 31, 2006

In sickness and in heath

Jo, Craig and I rented a car and went Henge Hunting. We forgot the lyrics of the Spinal Tap song, opting rather for an alternative mix of the Pet Shop Boys' Go West, replacing the main line "go west" with "Stonehenge", making up random shit to fill in the following bits. We saw some mounds of dirt used for burying important people, some fancy stones arranged in circles and drove through a lot of British country side. Jo gave some of the big rocks hugs and then we made our way to the Stonehenge. We got stuck in a traffic jam which chewed up most of our tourist time and got there with twenty minutes to spare. This did mean most of the people had already left and we got to share the area with about 30 others. Nice. Afterwards we found a nice ye olde English pub and ate stodgey English food by a cracking ye olde English fire.

Travel is that exotic thing you daydream about while sitting through another pointless office meeting. But in reality, it can sometimes suck, especially when you're sick. Thankfully I have friends and family around feeding me soup and chocolate and not a severe looking Finnish nurse inserting a lubricated hose up my bottom.

Tomorrow it will be 2007. Looking back, the highs and lows of 2006 have cancelled each other out - leaving me feeling a bit empty and a little bonkers. Now that I have the leveling influences of Jo & Craig around, I'm noticing that I have changed subtly since being in Australia.

Here's a short list of what I've learnt this year:

I have a stimulus limit
Travel in Russia is cheap and comfortable
Travel in China is very cheap and uncomfortable
A dozen ways to say hello, thanks and cheers
Relationships with emotional hypochondriacs aren't fun
Bratislava is a city, not a country
Americans aren't all bad
Tear gas does make you cry
Mongolia looks a lot like Australia
China is in no way, shape or form a communist country
what the inside of a pig looks like
Kiddy fiddlers go to jail
Hostels usually suck
Babylon isn't just a cafe in Slovakia
Saturn looks cool through a telescope
My jokes are still bad, even in other languages
Okinawans think that big boobs sharpen you up
There is actually a monkey on the mountain
Lenin looks like something from the House of Wax
English beer is crap
The longest Slovakian word - najnevjpozitavatelnrjsie
In Germany, carrying your passport is the law
The Dutch speak better English than the British


Launch the Video - Eastern Europe's Favourite Car
In other news, my Trabant video won me some loot.

Happy New Year

9 comments:

Ianto Ware said...

Dan. You're a genius. I've given you an award, as announced on my blog.

Anonymous said...

emotional hypochondriac?

Elf in Amsterdam said...

Congats on the award mate!

And Happy New Year....

Looking forward to seeing you soon! :)

Hugs
C

Anonymous said...

Yo Dan.

Happy Festivus!

Nice vid. What loot did you get? The $10K?


Chris
ps There's no fucking snow in Akita at the moment. Blarg!

Anonymous said...

"Mongolia looks a lot like Australia" Having been to neither, that statement still struck me as wonderful. Cheers

Anonymous said...

I wonder who that anonymous is?

Anonymous said...

well it's not me

Anonymous said...

and its not me, too

Anonymous said...

I reckon that a relationship with an emotional hypochondriac can be fantastic if you say the right things at the right times, show a lotta care and a lotta love. You just gotta be the RIGHT type of person to understand your partner. So, I think what you learnt in 2006 was that you're the wrong type of person for an emotional hypochondriac. Have a little bit of perspective.