the kevin bacon experiment

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2007-08-25T07:39:00.006+02:00

Well there it is. The Kevin Bacon Experiment is over.

For now anyway. I guess near the end I started getting the "oh shit, I'm going home soon, better not waste too much time on my computer" feeling, which made for a crazy last month of bouncing between Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Germany, saying goodbye to some of the stars from last year. And having Luke around for the last couple of weeks really helped with the easing into the returning to Australia vibe. There's still a few stories sitting on my PC yet to pass the draft process, but I'll put those up in time.

What next? Right now I'm dealing with the adverse effects of the 40 something hours of travelling and the 10 hour time difference from where the beginning of the end.. err.. begun. I plan long periods of time chilling with my people, both here in Melbourne and back in Adelaide as it's been a while since I've seen everyone. I will periodically put some stories up that are sitting unfinished on my PC, with some stuff from Cuba that has been left unloved deep in the bowels of my hard drive since those shady days. I'm putting together a little thank you package for the 60 or so people I stayed with while on the road, so email me through your names and addresses so I can post you out something nice. And once I sort through the 30,000+ photos and 20 hours of video and squeeze out something a little more easy to consume, I'd like to put together a little exhibition of photos from the trip, and maybe flog a few off in fancy frames.

As for the future of this blog, considering the company I normally keep, I'm usually only a random 3am idea away from madness and adventures. And I didn't actually meet Kevin Bacon, so there's still that goal to pursue. My flickr page will still be getting updated on a regular basis and I'll be kicking out at least a couple more videos in the next few weeks. Right now, I'm hanging out with my sis here in sunny Melbourne, doing the man servant thing helping her out with her bump. If you're floating about Melbourne and you're up for a beer and a chin wag, give me a tingle on: 0449 53 9797

It's been fun.

dan

The 3 Canadians

2007-08-14T14:41:00.001+02:00

March 1996 - Magil Campus unibar

Derek: Hi everybody. We are The 3 Canadians

crowd applauds

North: But back at home we're just known as 3 more Canadians

crowd laughs

Hmmmm...

professional szakmai

2007-08-08T10:44:00.001+02:00

Free to those who can afford it
Very expensive to those who can't

Luke and I had the initial plan to check out the Sziget Music Festival while we here, but we thought the time and money could be better spent touring around the surrounding Eastern European countries. But last night, through some weird cosmic gravitational pull and a substantial dose of good luck, Luke and I landed a pair of free week long tickets to the Sziget (worth 150 Euro each). Now our plans have returned to the slightly less worldly, still totally awesome music festival agenda. If you're in the area, sms us on +61403505402.

tea and vomit

2007-08-07T10:20:00.000+02:00

When you travel alone, if you don't interact with the people and scenery around you, you're left to hide away and explore the dark corners of in your own head. When you're a team, having someone to continually bounce off of, the locals turn into an exotic wall paper you admire occasionally as you joke about people and situations thousands of kilometres away back at home. But returning to a foreign city with a friend after doing the hard work by yourself, the place takes on a beautifully textured experience that allows you to be a tourist in a place that is distantly familiar. While I've loved the flexibility and freedom that travelling alone provides, there's something special about having a good friend to turn to and say: "I'm glad you're here". This was Vienna last week.

Showing Luke around Vienna was a lot of fun. Problem is, after a day of looking at the gorgeous buildings, we quickly fell into my old routine of chilling at MQ, Naschmarkets and cafe hoping. On the first night, we stayed with Daniel, a guy who plays hardball in the European Union's youth sector. We met up with Martina, the couchsurfer that kidnapped me (and eventually Rodney), up to the Tyrolean mountains a couple of weeks back. After staying with her, we jumped on a boat and headed down the Danube to Bratislava where we picked up the keys to Radovan's (another CS peep from last year), flat and stayed there for 2 nights. On the first night we chilled out in front of some European cable TV. The following day we walked all over the town, checking out the main castle and catching a bus out to Devin Hrad. Afterwards we dined on excessive amounts of Slovak cuisine, and then hit the Buddha Bar for beer and Becherovka. This triggered some sort of visceral memory within my body of the night out I had in Prague with Martine, and once we returned to the flat, I revisited portions of my Slovak dinner. Thankfully none of which landed in the toaster this time.

Once Bratislava was out of the way, we caught a train to Budapest and are staying with Vera, a Hungarian I stayed with last year. When we arrived, she had made a soup and dip for us to revitalise on and then we went for a wander around the neighbourhood. While walking near the Oktogon, we bumped into Rodney, who we knew was going to be here, but hadn't teed up a time or place to meet. This worked well for all concerned and we all walked down Andrassy and checked out Hero Square. Rodney peeled off and the rest of us went to Szimpla for a beer. The next day we climbed the hill I had ridden up probably 30 times while I was here last year and checked out the castle, sneaking a look over the other side at the San Francisco like districts in Buda. For dinner, we cooked a small feast at Vera's place and invited Rodney over for a bit of eggplant paprikash. After dinner, Vera went to bed and us boys went to Kuplung, the small bar around the corner and proceeded to get arse-holified. The next day was a write off and I spent most of the day trying to become active, only to get sick with movement. After another session of driving the porcelain bus, I felt much better and gave a couple of Budapest mates a call to work out a time to meet up. Mizik at 7. Julianna at 8. We brought the party to Szimpla, ate food and drank tea, catching up on the last 8 months of adventures. Further plans for World Domination were made.

happiness come from the achievement of goals

2007-08-02T15:28:00.001+02:00

When you're going to take over the world, you need to have the best help you can get.

Mr Toop arrived a couple of days ago bringing much needed wind to my sails. No Farmers Union Iced Coffee though. So far I've shown him Vienna (my adopted city), Berndorf (the village that adopted me), and tomorrow we head east along the Danube to soak in some post-soviet hospitality. We will be bouncing around Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia and Czech for the next couple of weeks. If you're in the blast radius, I encourage you to join us.

where has the writing gone?

2007-07-30T12:47:00.001+02:00

Honestly.. It's not all Facebook.

I realised in the mountains, that while I had access to the internet on someone else's computer, whenever I sat down with my own computer, writing wasn't the first thing that I wanted to do. A few weeks back, I fixed a problem with my laptop that has prevented me from doing any complicated video editing for the last 6 months. Now after busting out a few videos recently, I've picked up a nasty habit of editing whenever I get a spare moment between the doing the travel thing. So to sum up.. Currently, I'm more compelled to play with videos than to write. I feel kinda weird about neglecting the writing side of things, but seeing as there is no rule book to being creative (what an incredibly wanky thing to say), I'm going to strike while the iron's hot. Once the writing thing comes back to me, I will fill in the gaps.

Thanks to Martina (and friends), for a wonderfully colourful and entertaining 10 days in Graz and the Tyrolean Alps. It was also fun to randomly catch up with Rodney and go hiking through the mountains with a fellow gentleman. I am now in Vienna awaiting the arrival of the next chapter of the journey. Time to practice the In Time/Through Time dance moves.

the writing is on the wall

2007-07-22T14:45:00.001+02:00

Since I left Switzerland three weeks ago, I've been in Ravensburg for five days, staying with Ina, the super hospitable couchsurfer. Then crossed the border into Austria to Feldkirch to hang out with Maria, who I travelled with in Cuba. Then to Salzburg where I stayed with couchsurfer Daniela who lived in Australia for a few months. Now I’m in Graz, staying with another group of couchsurfing people, where it has been sizzling hot for the five days straight.

During the last month, I’ve had plenty of fun and random adventures, but have lacked the motivation to write about it. I've sat down about 20 times, begun to write something about my days and then lost my train of thought. I put this down to my travel energy being low, with a need to find the right time and head space to regroup before the next chapter of this journey rolls around in a couple of weeks. That and Facebook has become the second thing I check after my email. Dangerous little time wasting, homesickness generating gremlin of a website.

To find some inspiration and the lack of a temptingly, mindless wandering internet connection, I’m heading into the Tyrolean Alps for a week to sit by some water, retreat into a disconnected Nell-like state, and read, write, film, edit and photograph my way out of this mental block I’ve been experiencing for the last couple of weeks. I expect to have a full report of the places listed above and have made half a dozen virtual friends with people I already know and have the email address of when I get back.

ohh.. someone's just written on my wall..

99 Luftballons

2007-07-10T22:18:00.000+02:00

Hanging out with Simon and Pasqual was a lot of fun. Not only had my back started to clear up (which allowed me to stop being a cranky tit), but I had touched on the Switzerland I thought I had missed. On the night I got in, we went out for beers over the border in Konstanz*. We met up with a few of their friends at a bar where a hens night and a stag party of no relation to one another had collided on the next table. At one point, the bride came over to us selling the bric-a-brac contents of a wheel barrow, supposedly to raise money for the wedding. She pulled out a small bowler hat shaped Easter egg and asked me what the English was for it. Jokingly I said that it was known as a “butt plug” in English, and thinking I was being truthful, she started explaining to her friends what the English term for what this foiled covered chocolate thing was. The other, more fluent English speakers and I giggled like schoolgirls for the next half an hour at the misunderstanding and eventual setting straight I caused the bride to be.

*Crossing borders to get cheaper booze is nothing new to me on the trip. I acquired four stamps for every time Mizik and I ventured from Hungary into Slovakia to drink their cheaper booze. Here on the Swiss/German border that splits Konstanz and Kreuzlingen into two separate towns, the border security varies depending on where you cross. On the banks of Lake Konstanz, the world’s only “Art Border” exists, where there are no guards (plenty of cameras though), and the border is marked by a series of avant-garde statues that reminded me a bit of the water Toriis in Japan. Another border crossing involved a small blocked to traffic road, right next to the train line. There was a disused office and a places where guards would have stood. Again, no police but a few cameras. I was to later discover that on the other side of the train tracks, the border between Germany and Switzerland is marked by a wooden fence, which has a hole in it big enough to step through, guarded loosely by a bramble of blackberry bushes. I will have to live many lives and eat many berries to find one that tastes better than one I found there. When I told the guys about it, they said I was lucky that the inconspicuous bright green border patrol van hadn’t been there, or I would have probably spent the night in jail. The other crossing, the one near to the kebab shop, was the only one you could drive your car through. This one is patrolled by guards, but at 8pm they barricade the road and knock off for the day. This allows anyone on foot or bike to pass through freely, with a voluntary tax declaration form to fill in. Not sure which way it works, but at some point you either get money given back or taken away from you depending on which country you are leaving / entering.

I caught the ferry from Romanshorn (S) to Friedrichshafen (G), where the Zeppelin museum is. Nice little town with the museum and associated airport being a pretty cool place to spend an afternoon. They had a scale recreation of part of the Hindenburg, with a fairly extensive history of the Zepplein and the people and techniques involved with constructing them. Did you know that Zeppelin himself wasn't responsible for designing the airship, and was actually a rich count who lived in the nearby hills, occasionally pumping money into ideas that caught his interest? As for a place to visit as a tourist, I would say it was something you would go out of your way to visit, but if you were in the Bodensee area, it should be added to the list. Try to avoid spending the first 20 minutes swearing loudly at the audio guide, only to realise it is working and that you not reading the signs properly.

Walking around any history museum in Germany, I've noticed that they have an interesting approach to some of their darker past, leaving me with a weird, unable to be described feeling. This weird feeling is exaggerated by the English/American audio guide voice (with the English bloke sounding rather like Peter Jones from another guide), who comments on everything around you. I find the way history is represented differently depending on the outcomes of political decisions and social guidance, and most importantly who is defeated or victorious in times of war. Like that random friend you bring to a wake who gets drunk and knocks over the coffin, Germany has always felt bad about the whole Hitler thing. Did you know it is compulsory for all high school students to watch Schindler's List?

Anyhoo.. I caught a bus to Meersburg and then caught another ferry (apparently a woman has moved closer to the port because she has fallen in love with the boat – don’t ask), back to Konstanz. What I didn’t realise was that the ferry docks on the other side of a peninsular, which I walked around thinking that the city centre would appear “any minute now” for about 2 hours. But the walk itself was a pleasant one that I would recommend any visitor to this part of the world to do voluntarily. I did spy an elderly couple sunbathing nude on a chained off part of the beach. I took this as being odd, but German until two blokes walked out from behind a hedge fence completely starkers. “Hullo”… “Errr.. Hi”. I blush and walk around the corner, finding a FKK sign hanging proudly among the bushes.

This brings me to a point about taking photos of scantly clad people. In Monaco, I felt weird about photographing the beach area, as there were a number of girls there sunbathing topless. Yes I like boobs, but I'm not there taking pervy shots (that's what 'arty' photography is for), and just want to capture what I see. So when I walked past the opening in the hedge wall and saw about 40 nudies doing their thing, I really wanted to take a picture. But for the spectacle rather than the t&a. I didn't take the shot, but want to know from other photographers how I would take a candid shot of such a scene without appearing to be some kind of degenerate.

I got back and Simon took me to a kebab stand situated about 10 meters in Germany from the Swiss border. Apparently this place is cheaper and better tasting that the Swiss equivalent just metres up the road. Next day, I caught the ferry from Romashorn to Friedrichshafen again, then took the train from Friedrichshafen to Ravensburg. I got into town and killed time by chatting with an Irish guy who had moved to Germany for a girlfriend, broke up and now lives here as a relationship refugee. Nice bloke, who, whether by design or accident, works in the local Irish pub. Then I walked over to a nearby pub where I met up with Inga, my new host for the next few days. She sat me down, plonked a beer in front of me and asked me if I was hungry.

Sometimes I feel like Herbert Morrison and want to start shouting “Oh the Hospitality”.

socks & sandals

2007-07-08T22:44:00.000+02:00

I left Zurich and headed for Lake Konstanz. Whenever I mentioned to a local I was headed to the lake, I was always met with “ohhhs”, “ahhhs” and “you’ll really like that place”. And I did. I had searched for a place to stay near to the town of Konstanz, and found a Portuguese guy who was here to study German, living with a German host family in the little village of Wahlwies. Nice little place with apple storage sheds, a creek and the odd whiff of cow shit. On my second day I headed to Überlingen, a little village on the other side of the lake to Konstanz. I walked around the botanic gardens, checking out the nearby caves that seem have served an official civic service at some point. A few of them had little ankle deep pools in them, which according to one person, had to do with local monks cleaning people’s feet. Must have been some sort of Medieval mad cow dieses thing. At one point, I spent about 30 minutes getting ripped to shreds in an empty house block, foraging for raspberries and blackberries and screwed with the macro capabilities of my lens. The berries were worth the thorns and I got some nice bug photos. Compared to the previous week, it was a pretty nice day weather wise.

Once I had finished my two day stay in Wahlwies, I caught a very early train into Konstanz, where I wandered around for a little too long with my main pack looking for a place to stow it. When the lockers were back at the train station, hidden in plain view between the side entrance and the tourist office. I had a wander around the town, met a few people and had an interesting chat with a German Jehovah’s Witness who had been a missionary in the Philippines for 15 years. At 5pm I met with my new host and wandered over the border by foot. While only 800 metres from the border, with no visible break between towns, I was not in Konstanz anymore, and stayed with Simon and Pasqual in the Swiss town of Kreuzlingen. They are two Swiss mates who both hold Couchsurfing accounts and share a place together. Just when I thought I had missed out on getting the low down on Swiss culture, these guys came to the rescue. These guys gave me the inside goss on what the compulsory military service is like – Get this: Pasqual’s role for when the Germans finally invade Swiss territory involves riding around on a motorcycle, taking down the road signs to confuse the enemy. Not sure what good that does when almost every Volkswagen comes with a GPS these days. Another weird thing about the Swiss military is that once you have finished serving your compulsory time, you are asked to take your gun home with you, just in case the French want to have a fresh crack at breaking away from tradition.

A rather weird statistic is that Switzerland has a higher per capita percentage of gun ownership than the US. On weekends, the men who have finished their service travel out to firing ranges, get drunk and squeeze off a few rounds. This is to not only meant to keep them in practice at the drunken operation of a weapon (imagine you’re at the pub and English paratroopers start dropping from the sky), it also reinforces the idea that the enemy (when and if they appear), will closely resemble cardboard cut outs of SS soldiers, terrorists and Nazis of Middle Eastern descent. One sight that might take you by surprise is the one that is found on public trains heading out of town on Friday nights. Men dressed in the business like suit – shirt – tie, with a briefcase in one hand and a mobile in the other will sometimes have their assault rifles slung over their shoulder, resting against their back. How very Nakatomi. Apparently during WW2, the Swiss government had such a high opinion of its armed forces, that they claimed their fierce army was the reason why Hitler didn’t invade Switzerland. Hmm, me thinks it had something to do with the banks being there, rather than the Swiss’s ability to remove road signs. Perhaps this vested interest tactical may have been why the oil ministry building in Bagdad was one of the few government buildings to be spared during the bombings in 2003.

Yippe-ki-yea, mother fucker

Live Earth

2007-07-07T11:14:00.000+02:00

It would have been interesting to see how much of a fuss Al Gore made about the environment if he got his place in the White House.

Ill Communications

2007-07-04T19:01:00.001+02:00

You know that moment of realisation between letting go of a closing door and when it locks your keys in the car? Or when you get home after shopping only to remember that you forgot to buy that one thing you specifically went into the shop to buy in the first place? I felt that way about Switzerland. While in Zurich, I stayed with an Australian mate and even though I was able to say grouse and eat Vegemite in a sympathetic and understanding environment, I didn’t feel I had gotten close to Switzerland. My assumption was that through the Swiss people I knew, I would have interacted with the locals more. But apart from a BBQ at Sylvia’s, the couple of days hanging out with Deborah and a few conversations with randoms, I felt fairly detached from Swiss culture. On this trip, when I’ve stayed with a friend or at a hostel, I’m surprised at how much I miss the simple interaction and intimacy with a society that Couchsurfing affords. Sure, with fellow Anglophones you can drift into fast paced English, reliving familiar cultural references and playing with triple-entendre word play. This Anglophonic place requires no carefully selected words or dramatic hand gestures to get your point across. But for me, I'm left craving more interaction with the locals than just ordering a beer at the pub. This comfort sacrifices knowledge and fresh experience. You miss out on the next village’s annual potato day, you don’t see the birds swap position as they drift under the shadow of the bridge, there’s no tea with the Palestinian neighbour and you’re totally unaware of that time when that particular corner of a certain park was host to an impromptu 23rd birthday party. The country you’re in looses its identity, and a trip to a dozen countries blend into one generic “trip to Europe”, with the only things you take back being a credit card debt, some fuck ugly souvenirs and an ability to order sandwiches in seven different languages.

This intimacy and interaction requires energy. But so does getting sick. Enter the recent addition to my luggage – a wonky back.

I’ve always felt that I know my body. Similar to how one can plan Christmas day in August with Keith Martin’s Almanac, I could read it and anticipate my physical and mental well being for the next . My paternal grandfather died quite young of a heart attack, and my dad and his brothers have all had heart issues, so knowing how exercise and what I ate affected me was important. But while travelling, health issues become magnified and being able to work with your body similar to driving a car. Sometimes you can just coast. Other times you need to give all the engine can take. Some days, I’ve felt like I forgotten to change gears and am just revving it in neutral at green traffic lights. This perfectly describes Zurich. No energy. No zest. If you’re sick, you don’t have the energy to put yourself out there and interact. And if you don’t put yourself out there and interact, you may as well just strap on a heavy bag and walk around an unfamiliar suburb in your own town for a week.

My back issue started while I was with mum. Rather than wait for mum to put her bag on the trolley she had brought along, a bazaar combination of wanting to be a good son and my ‘eliminate all things that don’t fit in my schedule’ policy motivated me to carry mum’s bag for her. This did speed up metro connections and got us to trains on time, but combined with switching beds every night and the weight of my own pack; this mentality did wonders for my back. By France, I had learnt to wait for mum, but I had already sown the seeds of trouble. Once mum left for Ireland, I was practically begging people to crack my back for me. A big American guy half throttled me in Nice trying to get my spine back in shape, and by the time I got to Zurich, I had turned into a low energy, irritable shit. I would think: “Why isn’t Switzerland working for me?”. I hadn’t heard back from the Swiss people I met at Sylvia’s BBQ for beers, the couch I had sorted out appeared to evaporate a day before leaving, a good friend in Australia had given me some bad news and another friend had asked for a break in communications to get me out of their head. Fuck them all, I thought.

Yeah.. And here’s me thinking Switzerland was to blame.

On my last day in Zurich, I went to a chiropractor. Judging by the medieval drawings of people strapped to racks, being stretched and disembodied hands applying pressure to their back, I thought I was in for some pain. The doctor was an American woman who had married a Swiss and was now living in Zurich. Two apples in a sock huh? Not only did she fix my back, but she gave a much needed outsider on the inside perspective. She compared the Swiss mindset to a coconut. Hard on the outside. Soft on the inside. The procedure was expensive, but totally necessary. After my back was cracked, I walked around to stretch things out. Later, I went and had dinner with Deborah and Nerina, the Swiss girls I met in Cuba. Between Sushi rolling and Cuba reminiscing, I got Deborah to walk over my back, and each time it snapped, crackled and popped like a bowl of Rice Bubbles. My back was felling better and so was Switzerland.

Winge over.

fitting in

2007-07-01T16:13:00.001+02:00

Travelling alone is like being drunk. Emotions are experienced in extremes, no one around you understands what you’re saying, luck navigates you around a city and the ideas you come up with tend to be fairly silly. This is one such idea.

Something I was looking forward to when I got to Zurich was visiting the Freitag store. After 3 years, 2 laptops and being dragged around the world, my old neoprene slip had seen better days. Holes, rips, wear marks and recently a busted zip. Before coming to Switzerland, I emailed the Zurich based recycled material bag manufacturer to see if I could get a peak at their factory. They said no (which fuelled a Swiss guys theory that the bags are now made in China), but welcomed me to their flagship store to take as many photos as I like and pick up a discounted laptop slip while I was at it. When I arrived in Zurich, one thing I noticed straight away about the city was that 80% of the people (be that in business attire, riding a bike, vandalising a train station or simply loitering outside a McDonald's), have a Freitag bag. Like Birkenstocks in Germany, Uni Qlo in Japan or Farmers Union in Adelaide – local brand loyalty is strong. Every shape, colour and design is found hanging by recycled seatbelts from people's shoulders, and with the already used nature of the bag's material, it is impossible to pick the setters from the followers. When Peter Adams introduced me to Freitag about 5 years ago, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. No one else had one, let alone heard of them, and the one off, individual feeling that his bag had really appealed to me. Now that I was in Freitag’s natural habitat, I found the bags made up an army of individuals. Same same, but different. Then I got philosophical.

With the individual nature yet broad appeal of the product, Freitag is an excellent allegory for one of the paradoxes of the Western human condition: We all what to be different, but at the same time we want to fit in. Like the gentrification of a crack-den neighbourhood, these bags are no longer the keystone of cool, and the hip wave for Freitag broke about 4 or 5 years ago. In Zurich, this is no longer cutting edge fashion accessory. It has become part of Zurich’s social lexicon. It is considered the norm and other companies have begun to copy to cool. While these bags aren’t exactly something your nanna has, saturation point has been reached and the kids have moved on. Another parallel was the appeal of the exotic. While in in Australia, I'm just another Australian, but in the middle of Hungary, I'm a crazy alien from another planet. These bags anywhere other than Zurich are still considered pretty freaking cool.

My thoughts on how Freitag parallels with the meta and micro workings of human society and the psychology that drives it went on all sorts of tangents. In the end, I did buy a Freitag laptop slip and thanks to its bulkiness compared to my old slip, I've had to modify my backpack to get it to fit in. Funny how we modify our lives to be part of the team. When we next next up, we’ll have beers and I'll dribble on about the connections between man bags and the self for hours.

The Gaze

2007-06-26T23:52:00.000+02:00

On the exterior, Zurich is odd. If you came here for a day, walked around and took your photos in front of the pretty things, you probably leave with a weird impression of the place. It's clean; it's expensive; it has a high percentage of ex-pats; there's more Audi S series cars than anywhere else I've seen; and people like to stare at you without the politeness of sunglasses.

Unless you knew someone in Zurich, it would take a long time to warm to the place. On the street, people like to check you out and assess whether you're worth their time. Maybe this was due to my dishevelled backpacker get up, but on the night I arrived, I couldn't help feeling like there was a "fuck off outsider" vibe floating in my direction. I chatted to one guy who regularly visits Japan and he says that the people here in Zurich can be as difficult as the Japanese when it comes to getting past the courtesy and protocol and actually getting to know the person. His experience was that he has rarely felt as if the people he interacts with on a daily basis could be called his friends. Thankfully he was Swiss and understood where I was coming from. An American woman who married a Swiss chap and is now lives here, put it a little differently. She told me the Swiss people and the culture they live in is like a coconut. Hard on the outside, and fairly difficult to crack open. But once you're in, it's all soft, sweet and lovely. The funny thing about this is the last time I enjoyed coconut was in Cuba with a Swiss person.

I met a disproportionate amount of Swiss and Austrian people in Cuba. More than German, French and Spanish put together. Nothing can beat the Canadians contingency (well I may have a skewed view thanks to amount of time I spent at the Canadian embassy), but for a country the size of Switzerland, I sure met a lot of Swiss. Oh.. I just got a flash of this one Finnish guy who would pop up in the most random of places on a scooter. Hmm.. Not relevant to this story, but funny. Ok.. Swiss people. I met Sylvia in Viñales, after she had ridden 15km from the village to the cave (our group took a dodgy taxi). Even though she was buggered by the ride, she pushed on and joined Collin, Jack, Annick and me on our exploration of the caves once used by Che to hide guns in. Then a week later in Trinidad, I bumped into her, Irish Jack and Canadian Collin again. Austrian Mary and Australian Josh soon joined us, and then it all goes a bit crazy after that. On the second last day in Havana, after I said goodbye with Collin, I met Nerina and Deborah (more Swiss), on the steps of the Capitolio. These girls were fun to hang out with and until the last hour I was in Havana, they had made my final day in Cuba a delightful one.

Once Switzerland came around, I emailed the Swiss peeps to let them know I was coming to Zurich. I got in contact with an Aussie friend of a friend living there and asked if she wanted to catch up and rather than settle for just a drink, Sarah offered up her spare room for my time there. Cool. I said goodbye to the Bulgarians, and headed for the Alps.

To bookend this post, as I was leaving Zurich, there was this guy on the tram who was wearing a very special outfit. At first, I thought he had committed a simple double denim fashion faux pas. But when I looked again, I realised his denim pants and denim jacket weren't alone. Who looks at themselves in the mirror and says: "You know what this outfit needs? A denim button up shirt." Triple denim. So wrong yet so right.

steps

2007-06-24T10:46:00.000+02:00

Milano/Milan was a fun place. I stayed with a couple of Bulgarian exchange students (Nadia and Desi), in their apartment. They also had another Australian (Kurt) couchsurfer who had come to Europe to do some bike training with his ultra fancy carbon fibre $8000 bike. I got the impression that Desi and Nadia's flat mate (who was in Austria for the entire I was there), was blisfully unaware that two Australian boys were occupying her room.

What I saw of Milan was minimal, but Nadia toured me around some of her favourite spots. She showed me around her adopted city and told me about Bulgaria and what it's like to be living in Italy. I met a few of her design friends, visited a design museum and discovered that Milano's version of buffet did not come anywhere near the culinary delights of Torino. There was probably better places to go for Buffet, but I'm going to get all generalist and review the entire city of Milan based on one bad experience. It's a much dirtier city than Torino/Turin, but there's more going on here. Kurt stuck mostly to himself during the days, and for some unknown reason took a side journey to Como, not to check out the gorgeous scenery (where they filmed some of the new Star Wars movies), but to buy a bag for his bike. On the last day, the girls took me to an exhibition a little way out of town that featured work from some of their design buddies. Some interesting stuff with some rather unpleasant surprise sprinklers in the old gardens outside.

I think Kurt's plans got messed up and he overstayed his welcome a little with the girls. There were some tense moments when rather than asking "hey, I'm stuck. Can I stay another night?" he said "I'm leaving tomorrow now". Having been in a similar situation in San Francisco (sorry Roxanna), Kurt's faux par was something I could relate to. When I left, I mad sure Kurt came with me and caught the same train to Zurich. On the fantastically beautiful scenery train ride up we swapped Australian slang.

bring your brollies

2007-06-21T09:54:00.001+02:00

All I knew of Torino before I came here was the Olympics and the original Italian Job movie. Other than that, the city was a blank canvas. No expectation – no disappointment. I arrived at the central train station a little later than expected and met up with Catia, my first host for the city. On the walk back to her place, I find out she is from another part of Italy and is living in Torino, studying translation at the local university. After dumping my bags at her apartment, Catia took me for a walk around the local area, showing me the river and a castle some crazy rich guy built at a time when turrets and dungeons weren’t usually included in architecture drawings. Just outside the grounds of the castle, I was convinced that I saw the little dog with the manky paw Martine and I encountered in Prague and chased the owners across the park to ask them. No. There was something very unnerving about that Chihuahua whose paw looked like a windsock on a calm day and like to bite and bark everything around it. Within the castle walls it was if I had gone back in time to a primary school excursion to Sovereign Hill, a trip many Australian kids will tell you that's not even worth the permission slip. It was a faithful recreation, but being in Europe where plenty of this stuff exists for reals, I couldn’t help thinking what the point of it was. Soon after we left the castle, it began to rain, with giant raindrops soaking us to the bone. It was awesome. Thankfully Catia didn’t mind getting wet and we both walked through it, enjoying the fresh smell of rain on parched earth. The rain reminded me of something more suited to the tropics and the smell reminded me of when it rains in summer back at home. We get back to her flat and while dripping wet, I met her flatmates and the fat house cat. We changed and then went to a cool bar around the corner and met some more locals. There’s a bunch of food laid out on tables, but I assume it’s for a private function and don’t take any. We discuss the not so mundane topic of the weather with some of the others at bar amd all concur that humans have broken the earth.

The next day I spend exploring the city by myself, dropping into random clothing stores, record shops and art galleries and chatting to people. I climbed hills, checked out a bunch of churches and lapped up the warm weather in the many public spaces on offer (Which the locals use for alfresco dining, illegal parking and ice cream). There are archways all through the city (12kms of them), which are beautiful to walk through when the novelty of getting rained on wears off. Near to the University, I walk into a little clothing store called Psiche. I chat with Simona, the girl who runs the place for about 20 minutes about what I should do and see while here in Torino. She makes a little list for me and circles points of interest on the map. I make friends with Bruno, the store dog. The guy who supplies the T-shirts comes in and tells us that he spent a couple of years living in Australia. Soon after, the other guy, Maurizio, who runs the store turns up and we chat about t-shirts and travel. We had a pretty cool conversation, I take their photo and as I’m about to leave, they give me a free t-shirt. Torino is off to a good start.

Later, I meet up with Catia and she takes me to a buffet bar. Like the bar on the previous night, this one has food laid out on tables, but when I buy the drinks, the woman behind the bar instructs me in the ways of the locals: “grab a plate and enjoy as much as you like”. Torino buffet is the best deal in Europe I've found. Depending on how close you are to the touristy bits, you pay around 4 to 7 Euro for a drink (any drink), which gains you access to a huge variety of food that looks like it has just come out of your adopted Italian nanna’s kitchen. The variety and shear volume of food found in a buffet puts any of the Tapas found in the south of Spain to shame and easily makes for a complete meal. Allegedly Torino is the best place for buffet, with only a handful of other Italian cities recognising the practice with equal gusto. If I lived here, I would need to buy a bike.

Over the next couple of days, I take it easy. Still recovering from the intensity of touring with mum, I enjoyed the much needed chill time. I spend parts of my day writing, editing and photoshopping, walking around between cafes and using the flat's kitchen as my office. The stove at Catia’s place has three little Italian coffee makers loitering near by and I try coffee made in each one. My dormant addiction to strong coffee awakens. Here’s to headaches and lack of concentration without the black doctor. After wandering around, meeting people and exploring the city, I come to the conclusion that Torino is a thoroughly enjoyable place. It has a really colourful past, a great small town/big city feeling with an energetic yet humble vibe, is close to the snow during winter and has that beautiful European city thing I’ve grown to love over the last year. It would be a great place to live for a little while and the thought of stopping and teaching English makes another appearance. Hmmm.. Good food, cheap booze, a strong connection to the national affinity with motor sport, close proximity to the rest of Europe and girls who touch your arm when they talk to you - Doesn't make for the clearest of minds for making such decisions.

On Thursday, Catia had a mate from her home town coming to stay with her and helps me get to my next couch. We meet up with Guiliana and straight away I’m reminded of my good mate Jules back at home and the 80s music and pop culture references fly thick and fast. Guiliana has something to do with media sales to broadcasters and occasionally does work for the city helping to set up art exhibitions. After dumping my stuff, we go back to the centre, say goodbye to Catia and join a Couchsurfing meet up. I’ve gone to a couple of these while travelling, but as a traveller rather than a host (which usually makes up the majority of people at these events), I felt a bit out of place. A few other travellers and out of towners join the meeting and we exchange tips on the nearby towns of interest. I chat to a couple of people that seem to have joined CS to travel vicariously through the travellers they have come stay, and convince them that second hand travel (lounge chair couchsurfing if you will), never compares to the real deal. As I’ve said before, I like to inspire people to see the world, not make them jealous.

The next few days, Guiliana shows me around the city. On Friday we go to the National Film Museum, which is hosted inside the Mole (pronounced moul-ee). The building was supposed to be a synagogue, but half way through construction, the Jewish community ran out of money to keep going, and sold the uncompleted building to the city. At the time it was completed, it was the tallest building in the world, and still towers above most of Torino. The film museum is great, with the first floor dealing with the technical history of cinema. As Guiliana proudly pointed out the stuff she worked on, the museum begins with shadow puppets, moving in loose chronological order through POV animation, early photographic techniques, stereophotography and the introduction of film. It’s amazing what a bet between rich men about whether or not a horse has all four feet off the ground at one moment can achieve. There some funky old projectors, a tonne of stereophotography equipment, peep shows (of the PG & non-PG variety), samples of early films and enough English for the Anglophonic tourists to interact with and understand the exhibits. Once the first floor is done with, we went up to the next section, which is the gigantic space within the dome of the Mole. An exhibition of Ferrari in Films is currently showing and two big screens showing clips of Ferraris doing burnouts, wheelies and making people look cool hang from the walls. With some cheeky editing, Elvis looks like he's in The Fast and the Furious, Nicolas Cage is being chased by Will Smith and Fangio is racing against Magnum PI. The rest of the Ferrari exhibit lacked somewhat, with only pictures of famous rich people and their Ferraris lining the giant spiral walkway lining the walls of the dome. Instead of the posters showing each model of Ferrari, I would have like to have seen the model of Ferrari and a list of the movies it appeared in. Oh well. I was still happy with the petrol guzzling. The rest of the museum is made up of permanent exhibits paying tribute to different genres of films, with separate sections focusing on directors, filming technics and actors. Great interactive exhibits for the kids with plenty of memorabilia for the oldies. But the big highlight with visiting the Mole is the elevator to the top. Made of glass and suspended between a shaft made of cables rather than concrete, it seemed that the elevator’s occupants were being taken up by an alien ship for a bit of friendly probing. The ride up is great, with the detail swap between the floor and the ceiling a bit of a mind flip. Looking directly up the hole in the roof where the elevator is about to slip through, I think, “even though I know this fits through, I think we’re going to get stuck, the cable will snap, the elevator will fall and smash into a million pieces of glass, blood and metal”. It doesn’t and the view of the town is amazing. To think, this has been here for over 100 years.

On Saturday, Guiliana and I took the trolley up to the Basilica of Superga, where in 1949 a plane carrying the Torino soccer team, while flying back from Portugal crashed in heavy fog, killing everyone on board. Since 9 of the players from Torino were also a part of the national team, the whole country went into mourning. The museum system here is a little weird, with the only way to see the exhibits is by joining a guided tour in Italian. As Guilanna quietly translates important details to me, a couple of the oldies on the tour give us nasty glares. We break away from the main group (a hard thing to do when there are only 3 rooms), and take stuff in at our own pace. It’s clear that Guilianna knows her Italian history and I suggest that she should offer up her services and become a freelance tour guide for English speaking tourists. Alledgedly this is next to impossible in Italy as the requirements for setting up such a business make it difficult for smaller companies and individuals to do so. I say sod it and just accept cash.

Did you know the last Italian Pope (John Paul I), was only in office for 33 days, before being found by a nun, dead in his chambers of an unknown cause. He was in the midst of separating the Vatican banking system from the Italian system, which was going to financially fuck a bunch of influential catholic big wigs and a few mafia types. John Paul II (Pope - The sequel), got the position next and the whole banking kafuffle evaporated overnight, swept under the carpet in true Catholic style.

On my last day in Torino, I went out in the morning to check the Olympic area out and cross the big suspension pedestrian bridge near to Guilianna’s flat. But as soon as I reached the park it began pissing down with rain, and I spent the next 20 minutes taking cover in the hut at the top of kiddie slippery dip. After waiting a bit, I braved the run to a nearby café and enjoyed some tasty Fonzies. I got back to Guilianna’s place and then we drove into the centre and checked out the Egyptian museum. This place is fully stocked with mummies, treasure and is one of the few museums in the world to hold the entire contents of one complete tomb. Due to the sloppy work of other thieves; sorry archaeologists; the majority of tombs were only staked out for their valuable things like gold and treasure, and were usually robbed by those in the know a few months after the important person was buried. There were mummified cats, monkeys, crocodiles and 3,000 year old bread. Impressive collection, with the museum boasting that it is second only to the one in Cairo. I make a beef jerky joke, and we leave. Next on the list was the castle, full of artwork and old things collected by the city over time. Then the last thing we went to was the World War II museum, which houses many interactive exhibits, featuring people of Torino telling their story from the war. This by far was the best thing I saw the whole day, with the presentation and layout of the museum really impressing me.

Later Guilianna and I meet up again with Catia and we take Buffet at the cool bar that Catia took me to on my first night in town. I ask for a surprise from the bar tender (who is half French, super friendly and absolutely gorgeous), and I get this amazingly tasty and dangerously strong mixed berry daiquiri. We eat our fill of salads and lamb cutlets (another fantastic 6 Euro Torino feast), and then say goodbye to Catia. Guilianna and I grab Thank you for Smoking from the DVD store and laugh ourselves silly. Katie Holmes does surprisingly well in it. Perhaps that’s because she isn’t on screen for that long.

The next day I’m on a local train to Milano.

The F Word

2007-06-19T12:30:00.001+02:00

Before I leave France behind, I need to share one of the highlights. I had just floated out in an inspired cloud from another small gallery featuring an amazing exhibition by a South Korean artist who, in the style of The Planet of the Apes, had replaced the faces in famous paintings and photos with those of gorillas. After the apes, I walked into a small gallery with some amazing photos hanging on the walls. A shallow focus shot of a man paddling a boat over rolling waves absolutely blew my mind. In a haze of aperture and iso inspiration, I offered to donate one of my photos from my trip to the gallery. I didn’t ask for any money. I didn’t give away my copyright. All I asked was that when the gallery put my name on it and when they eventually had it printed and hung, that they would send me a photo of it there on the wall. They then told me they had another gallery in Monaco and that it might pop up there as well.

Time to leave Nice
I had looked at a map of places within 200km of Nice to see where I should head next. Nice itself has fallen into the same trap as Lorne and Byron Bay - only 50 years earlier. Cute little town by the sea that has grown too fast for the infrastructure to keep up. That and the massive three year long road works installing a new tram line through the heart of the city has made for a chaotic, seething with tourist mess. After Alex took me to a pool bar on Sunday where we were charged 16 Euro for two steins of beer (a price enforced by the two heavy dudes who controlled the automatic doors), I knew that this was my final night on the coast.

There were a few places within 200km that seemed cool, but mostly I wanted to get away from the coast and check out either the rural or mountainous areas. I fully intended to stay in France, but included a couple of places over the border in Italy for a bit of variety. I sent some couchsurfing requests out to some interesting looking people. One that I was really excited about was an old French bloke of 76 years who had worked as a translator during times when England and France’s hostilities extended a little further than just frustration at not being able to communicate properly and the perceived inadequacies of one another’s cooking. When I got to the train station the next morning, there was a strike and all French trains were either cancelled or hideously delayed. Nice had passed its used by date and I had tired of the occasional snooty remark from tourism workers about my lack of French*. Rather than work my way up to Paris, I grabbed a train to Torino, Italy. Because of the strike, I had to take a not-so-cancelled local train to the Italian/French border and wait for a train that according to the French rail worker, may or may not come. I work out the automated ticket machine (the English button helped), and skip the massive line of piss off and confused tourists. The board tells me platform 6 and I head there. On my way I double check with a guard if 6 is the right platform. He looks at my ticket and tells me to go to platform 4 instead. Ok. The platform’s board says a destination that’s not on my ticket, so I check with two more guard and they all agree that platform 4 is where the train will leave from. Train arrives, I get on and as we are pulling out (in the same direction I had just come from), I look out the window and notice the train at platform 6 is clearly marked with Torino Porta Nueva, where I want to go. My stinky mood and silent swearing was soon doused by beautiful mountainous views, little villages hanging from the sides of cliffs and impossible looking castles perched on the top of rocky outcrops. I no longer cared if I was going the wrong way. I was just going. It would sort itself out eventually. After some inoffensive sign language with the conductor, it was made clear that I was on the right train and that all I needed to do was change at certain station to get the correct train to Torino. So I sat back and enjoyed the train ride as it stitched its way through the mountains along the French/Italian border.

*Really. I make an effort when I go to a country. I learn the basics (greetings, pleasantries, numbers, etc), and feel that if I’m dealing with someone who speaks English and who’s job it is to help tourists, I shouldn’t have to cop an ear full about my inability to conjugate verbs or conduct an in-depth political discussion. On the night I went to stay at a hostel in Nice, my question of if the bloke behind the counter spoke English was met with a “no”. I struggled through my bad French and I sorted out my bed for the night. A little later, I heard him lucidly chatting in English with a group of Japanese tourists. A French girl I spoke to said that she went to the airport with an Irish friend of hers to sort out some tickets, they started out with the “Palais vous Engla siv ou play?”, to which the attendant said no. This was fine and good as the French girl could translate between them. But about two minutes into the conversation it became clear that the attendant could understand everything that the Irish guy was saying (a small feet in itself if the word isn’t ‘Pint’), and the French girl got quite irritated with the airline guy and cracked the shits at him for giving France a bad name.
After his own adventures through Euroland, a tip for handling just such a situation was offered to me by Mikey B. His advice was to approach the situation slightly differently. Rather than walking up and immediately asking in English (or badly pronounced French), if the French person behind the counter speaks English, try asking in you best-worst French if they speak Russian, Spanish, Hungarian or any other language your complexion can get away with. When they say no, offer up English as the second option and watch how polite they are with helping you out, minus the attitude. The best part is, half way through the conversation they realise they’ve been conned but have to suck up the snoot and continue being courteous. That said, not everyone in France is like this, but when you get a dose of it, you get the full offering. Can someone who is French offer an insiders perspective on this?

Italy vs Germany

2007-06-16T21:39:00.001+02:00

I was planning on going to Berlin for the summer, but Italy's kinda cool. As I have no real plans between the end of next week and the first week of August, I'm open to suggestions about where to go for the next month.

Travelling without moving

2007-06-11T14:00:00.000+02:00

Ok.. this is getting silly. Mum has taken off on her own adventure, there’s been another three countries, two weeks and 1,800kms between where I last wrote about, so I’m going to make this quick.

Cordoba
On the train from Granada to Cordoba, we met an American who had read my blog and we all agreed that thanks to the internet, the world is a much smaller place. The Kevin Bacon Experiment in full swing here ladies and germs. We got to Cordoba at around 7pm, and by that time the tourist office had shut and there was no little Spanish nonna corralling us on to a public bus to take us to a place to stay. I asked a girl waiting to point us in the direction of the centre and after walking to the part of town where there seemed to more hotels and cafes, I spotted some young backpackers and said to mum and Peck: “these guys look cheap and leaving somewhere. Let’s asked them where they stayed.” We did and they pointed us a little pension in a side street just off one of the main strips. Nice place. Mum still sounded like a broken Husqvarna chainsaw in need of repair, but I was too tired to care. In the morning we visited the Mezquita, which allowed visitors free entry at the ungodly hour of 8:30 to 9:30. This was a great time to visit the place, as there were hardly anyone in there and the photos from inside turned out great. At some point we lost Peck, and mum and I just wandered about the place marvelling at the architecture. Mum’s brain snapped a few times with the complexities and intricate nature of the Islamic designs and she became angry at the Christians for desecrating such a place. Mum and I pondered what the reaction of a Muslim visiting this place would be and how they would feel that their religions beautiful poetry and aesthetics have been polluted by plastering, idol nailed to trees and coke machines. I have a moment where I realise that after all the shit mum has been through, that she deserves this (and more), and I walk off to have a little tear to myself. Damn her dud boyfriend. He should have been here to enjoy this with her. Instead he’s totally content with his big screen TV, wanky wines, stinky cheeses, expecting mum to make him dinner when she gets home tired from work and footy on Friday nights. You might have guessed that I don’t approve of him. Dud. I plot to drag mum to the Greek Islands some day so she can have her Shirley Valentine moment.

After we finish walking around inside the Mezquita, we exit the building and find a group of Imams hanging out in the gardens, waiting to go in. Curiously I walk up to them and ask if anyone of them speak English. Initially I am greeted quite coldly, with some rather rude and suspicious looks. Eventually I find a guy who speaks English and I ask him what it is like to visit such a place as a Muslim. Having just walked out of the place in complete awe of the beauty myself, his “I find this place disgusting. They came in and took what was ours.” Not wanting to stir shit too much, I skipped my “but you guys stole it from the Romans” remark, opting for the more diplomatic “they left everything that was beautiful and took what was important”. This was the first time I got a smile from him, and his expression changed from “you’re just another white guy that thinks we are all terrorists” to “you understand”.

The rest of the day, mum and I wandered about the backstreets. I discover the best flavour of icecream I’ve ever had (Spanish Nata with roasted pine nuts), find a café that sells Tab (it still tastes like shit), and basically wander around soaking in the oldness. We found a few small alleyways that had banners hanging over the road, which mum could translate for me. One of them had a quote from a Pablo Neruda poem: Podrán cortar todas las flores, pero no podrán detener la primavera- which roughly translates to: You can cut all the flowers but you can never capture the Spring. This marks another special moment for the me and mum journey, as I would have walked past this and totally missed one of the most beautiful sentiments I’ve ever heard. I decide to acquire this as the perfect allegory for my photos from the past year. Later, we sit down at a café near to our pension and Peck wanders past and she joins us for coffee and we compares notes on our day. In the evening, mum takes the night off and us youngins go out for beer and tapas at a local bar. The guy behind the counter explains to me his love for AFL and presents us with an extra helping of fried anchovies as a reward for me being Australian. We then go hunting for more people and beer, and eventually find a stall in a park selling cooked snails with tasty spices. One cup of steamed snails and a beer – 3 Euro. The next morning, Peck heads for Sevilla early, while mum and I are stick around to explore a bit more of the city.

Sevilla
We get off the train from Cordoba and I go to the tourist info spot and sort out a Pension just near the Giralda Tower. We bus it in to the centre and walk to our new digs. Once we get sorted with our room, explosions sounding like cannon fire can be heard firing off in the distance. With my dog like predisposition of getting restless when bright lights and loud noises are about the place, I go for a quick scout around where we are staying while mum has a shower and gets ready. We hit the streets around 7pm and I show mum about the places I had just looked around. The loud bangs go off every couple of minutes, with mum and I instinctively ducking as if we had just come straight outta Compton. I convince mum to follow me towards the loud bangs, and we eventually find our way to the Guadalquivir river and a procession of beautifully dressed Spanish May festival revellers. We followed the procession through the street and there is a wonderful energy just being amongst it. From what I could tell, the tourist to local ratio was at a good level, which meant the pick pocket to mum ratio was at a level of which we could wander about separately. The parade lead us all around the old part of Sevilla and it reminded me a little bit of Friday night skating in Vienna, where you see the city under the guise of a magical experience, rather than on the top of one of those horrible red buses. We stopped at a nice little pub for wine and tapas, and ended up chatting with a small group of English speakers (UK, Sweden and I forget), who have been living in Spain for around seven years. I use this as another point to try and convince mum to live here in Spain for six months and work as a teacher. There is a brief moment where I catch a spark of interest in mum’s eye, but this fades quickly. If she wanted to, she could do it.

The next day, mum and I tour the huge gothic cathedral which was built next to the already standing Islamic Giralda Tower. This place is massive and mum’s head breaks again. The pillars remind me of the Sequoia trees I saw in California. We climb the tower to see Sevilla from where the call to prayer was made over 700 years ago. Inside the tower, there are ramps rather than stairs, as the caller would ride their horse to the top like and old school elevator. The view is amazing. We spend the afternoon and the next morning exploring the city and in the evening, we board the overnight train back to Barcelona so we can take the bus to Andorra.

Andorra
We arrive in Barcelona, and head to the bus station to take the bus up into the Pyrenees and to Andorra, the lovely little tax haven Europe has fostered over the years. The ride up was spectacular, with so many gorgeous little villages and monasteries hanging from the side of cliffs, with violent rock faces and snow capped mountains lining our view. The environment changes as we enter the valley where Andorra is hidden. It felt a bit like discovering the Eagle’s Nest. We arrive in Andorra la Vella in the afternoon and go to the tourism office to find a place to stay. They arm us with a map and a book, and we decide on a cheap place just off the main strip. When we get there, the stair well had the appearance of a crack house (sorry Luke, a crack home), and from behind a large pile of Styrofoam, a sketchy looking guy (who may or may not have been about to rob us), informs me that the place had been closed for some time. Mum and I go to a café, and use their phone to book into another place just up the road. We dump our bags and go grab some food. After food, we find that the town shuts down at around 9pm, and the excessive amounts of personal security devices for sale in the windows tells us that perhaps the street of Andorra la Vella after dark are possibly not the best place to be (really, it’s quite a safe place, but my Sketch-o-metre has been a little out of whack since Cuba). In the morning we discover the place is all about shopping and I convince mum to trade in her Qing Dynasty shoes for some practical walking shoes. We spend 40 minutes walking around the Andorran equivalent to Big W before I drag mum to an actual shoe store to buy something that may actually b good for her feet. Mum finds a pair of Timberlands that she likes and is surprised that the moment she puts them on, her feet can almost be heard singing thanks for her gift to them. Mum suggests we stick around Andorra for another day, but I say that it would be a crime against France to spend another day in such a vacuous hole. That said, I did find some funky kids spray painting cars for an exhibition at a car show, but when I asked what it was like to grow up in a place that is one big duty free store, they said it was shit. We jump a bus out of there and head for France.

Nice
We arrive in L'Hospitalet, and at the train station I persuade mum to take the overnight train to Nice, and use that as a base to see the surrounding sites, rather than trying to travel between all the small places each day. The train to Toulouse was ok, but the midnight train from Toulouse to Nice was thoroughly unpleasant. The train station was crawling with sketch (my Sketch-o-metre may be out of whack, but this was sketch), and I hide mum in the café – which we get kicked out of when they close at 11:30pm. We then get onto the train, but board the wrong carriage thanks to some badly marked signs. The carriage is full of drunk, shirtless French yobbos, and we need to pass by them to get to our carriage. Just as we get to the door to leave the carriage, a guy hooks up a pipe to the side and begins to pump out the piss and shit from the previous journeys ablutions. This being a sketchy train station, there is a rip in the hose and a fine spray of poo wee cocktail sprays across the our exit, preventing us from leaving. As if unaware of what was spraying against his legs and soaking into his socks, a conductor stood at the door and instructs us to get off. Mum rightly refuses and I kick up a fuss. Eventually they turn the pump off and we change carriages. I spend the next few hours laying semi awake, watching the sketchys float through the carriage, picking out people to rob while they sleep. Thankfully a guy playing a PSP in the next carriage attracted enough attention away from me and mum and I relax. We arrive in Nice, walk into the central part and find a place to stay. After the south of Spain, Nice has a really dirty, sour and plastic vibe. Street works all along the main road spoil any view of classic French architecture and the whole place fails to resolve as the classic south of France fairy tail ideal which I had built in my head.

That said, there are nice parts of Nice. The old town is gorgeous, the beach (while covered in rocks), was still pretty and the surrounding ports and 600 year old infrastructure. On the second day, mum stops her grumbling about rushing from Andorra to Nice, realising that if we had tried to travel between all the little places she had planned out that we would have spent more time travelling and less time seeing the place. Mum takes a day off and relaxes, doing some ironing and just pottering about the place. I go do some much needed laundry (the dreaded second day socks had turned into the unholy third day socks), and internet is lapped up on both sides. On day three we hire a little green Renault and drive around the surrounding hills. We check out the spectacular Tourettes-sur-loup, drive about the hills near to where Ronin was filmed and spend the afternoon at a perfumery in Grasse.

In the morning, I drive mum to the airport (after a couple of stressful ‘mum can’t read maps’ moments), and I get her to her plane to Ireland. Mum has since toured around the south of Ireland, and met up with my mate Clair who took her out for lunch and entertained mum while she was in Dublin. After the airport, I dropped the car back at the rental shop, and did some solo touring around Nice. As my Couchsurfing didn’t kick in until the next day, I found a hostel for the night and hung out with an American couple who were really lovely. The next day I toured around Eze, where I met a French-Canadian girl and on the bus I spotted a Finnish couple (Marimekko skirts are a dead giveaway), and we ended up hanging out all day and checking out another hanging off a cliff French village. Later, I met up with my French couchsurfing host, Alex, who I planned to stay with over the weekend. On Saturday we took the train to Monaco and hung out at the track, checking out the palace, castle and big church on the hill. This is the best setting for an F1 race, as it is the perfect allegory for the stupid excess that the pinnacle of motorsport represents. That said, there was some moments where I understood what it meant for a Muslim to take the pilgrimage to Mecca. Hmmm… Sacrilicious. To explain my reaction: I was brought up on a diet of Grand Prix (pronounced Grand Pricks), Bathurst, WRC, car chase movies, Gran Turismo and Evel Knievel retrospectives. Coming to Monaco made something in my blood tingle. Seeing that hairpin & walking through that tunnel and imagining the deafening scream of F1 cars fanging it towards the double 90 degree turns and the port side final sector clicked the faith switch in me. I know somewhere in the fuel starved future ahead of us, I will work with cars in some capacity.

The next day was Sunday – a day of rest.

On Monday, I said goodbye to Alex and headed for the train station, with the plan to head to Gap. When I got to the station, something about the words “Strike”, “Train” and “Today” casually hanging out together on a generic Times New Roman sheet of paper told me that I wasn't going anywhere in France. I had had a gutful of Nice, so I flipped a coin and after one of the prettiest train trips I've ever taken, I'm now in Torino, Italy.

The science of siesta

2007-06-03T15:40:00.000+02:00

I can remember as a kid, laying awake in my bunk bed thinking “wow, even through these double brick walls, I can still hear dad snoring”.

It wasn’t dad.

This is the first time since I was a baby that I’ve shared a room with my mum, and to use the words of my sister: she snores like a warthog. We’re talking surgery required at the nearest hospital degree of snoring. I’m quite a light sleeper, so if someone (anyone), has woken me up with their “rub it in your face, I’m getting better night’s sleep than you” snoring, I crack the shits and wake them up. I remember on a bus trip to Melbourne (I think it was for the Radiohead concert that never materialised), Jules was asleep next to me and across the isle an older guy would sporadically burst into ear-splitting fits of snoring. Despite the super comfortable bus seating and my rolled up jacket pillow, I was having a hard time sleeping. Around the Nhill point of the journey, just as the rumble of the road was lulling me off to a world where road lines are the staple diet of buses, another eruption of snoring fires off over the demilitarized zone of the isle. As this had been a running theme all night, Jules starts to giggle at both the guy and my pissed reaction. That was it. My sleepless fury had peaked and something violent snapped inside of me. In an action I’ve never been able to repeat since, I gripped the sleeve of my jacket, whipped it out from under my head, snapped it directly on the offending nose and returned it to it's previous pillow state under my head in one frog tongue like action. The snoring guy woke up startled as Jules and I tried to keep our laughing to ourselves.

Sleep in the same room as me and snoring wont be tolerated. I've been told that I snore softly, and that it is a gentle sound that inspires sleep in those around me rather than urgent midnight calls to an ENT doctor. I have, however, dismissed this as lies. I’ve never heard myself snore.

After a sleepless night and a day of walking and planning, we head for the train station to sort out the tickets for the next day train journey to Granada. This turned into a marathon effort thanks to the 3 people serving and the 200 people waiting. We grabbed our ticket (464), look up at the big red numbers (227), and find a corner to dig into. Queues are a war of attrition. Patience is tested. Fortitude is rewarded. It felt a bit like the scene in Beetlejuice, where he’s in a waiting room and is given a ridiculously high number compared to the “Now Serving” display. In the time we sat there, we watched several backpackers fade from the wait time and waddle off (possibly to become street performers), a couple having a bit of a tiff in the next row of seats (amazing what you can pick up from body language alone), and flirted with the idea of getting a Eurail pass but could only find details about it in Spanish. European train stations are fun place to just sit and watch. The silent games you can play as people pass are always amusing. Guess the Nationality is fun. Canadians are always piss easy to pick, thanks to their mandatory “I am not a fucking American” Canadian flag sewn to their packs. Germanic types north of Bavaria do that sandal sock thing, which only occurs elsewhere in bearded, outdoor loving year 9 English teachers from Australia. Aussies have this swagger that comes from either thinking they own the place or walking all day in shorts and thongs. Americans talk loudly. Eastern Europeans, thanks to James Bond movies and a rough night on a train, always have that look that they will stab you in your sleep. Japanese backpackers rarely travel with company, are very quite and either carry the contents of their shoebox apartment back at home, or just a magical Mary Poppins bag that is light as feather but has everything they need for 3 years of travel.

If your thinking of trying this experiment in Adelaide. Forget it. Our national train station, for some ungodly reason, is not part of the central station, was designed with Neo-Brutal Soviet apartment blocks in mind and is no where near anything interesting (unless you find surprise sex in the parklands and Bunnings interesting). I hear the new bus station is taking shape, but all you’re going to see is backpackers getting off, dropping their bags at some hostel on Flinders street or jumping the tram to a Glenelg backpackers. If you’re lucky enough to catch them the next day as they cram onto the Firefly to Uluru, you see them ticking off Adelaide in their little travel book as done and dusted. Go on, walk up and ask someone who looks like a traveller and ask what they are looking for and what they’ve seen. If you got the time, show them your favourite part of the Botanic Gardens, take them to Vegos and loving it, educate them on the joy that is Coopers, show them the basement at Bigstar, sit on the upstairs seats at Cibo that overlook the Frome Road - Rundle Street intersection. Do your home town proud kids, sign up for couchsurfing and show some random foreigners around. Just before I left, I had a couple of German girls stay with me. Rather than doing the cookie cutter Rick Steve’s adventure they had planed, Pip and I took them out to see a band play at the Grace Emily, entertained them with tales of Adelaide's dark past and fed their hangovers with a tasty Store breakfast and a pie and ice coffee at the St Peters 7th Avenue bakery. Is that a hint of home sickness peaking through? Eee gads.

Ok.. Where was I.. Ah. Barcelona Train Station.

After a day of walking about Barcelona checking off the odd thing here and there that we had missed in the first two days, we return to the Australian themed pension (home to revelations in the field of snoring and a family who immigrated to Australia back in the 50s and then immigrated back to Spain in the 80s), collect our bags and head for the train station. The cabins are separated by gender, and mum gets to inflict her nose on a group of strange women, one of which has a body odour akin to Austrian chess – it smells like a Brunswick taxi driver’s beaded seat massager, but there’s something about that makes you think it would go great with wine and crackers. I get to share it with a guy who has one of those fold up bikes stuffed in his bag; another guy who when he talks, little beads of blood-laced spit form at the corners of his mouth; and a guy who enjoyed testing out all his ringtones on his phone at 3am in the morning.

I must say at this point, mum is doing surprisingly well with keeping up the pace. Sure, there are some moments where the realisation that perhaps bringing a better pair of shoes or that maybe white pants aren’t the best for travel or hanging your wet washing in the train cabin for overnight drying is possibly a bad idea. But all in all, she’s managed to keep up with the early mornings and frantic see everything we can in the short time we have schedule.

I get my best night’s sleep overnight train trips, with the gentle tick tick noises and slight movement provided my favourite variety of nocturnal rest. I get a similar night’s sleep when there’s a fan switched on in my bedroom, which I think has to do with white noise and rhythmic movement. I wake up to find mum excitedly snapping photos out the window of the Southern Spanish country side, which looks a bit more like home than I expected. Cheese lady has since developed a more pungent smell (suited to being served with morphine and a straight jacket), my blood-spit guy has left his complementary toothbrush on my cabin’s sink (imagine a shoe polisher releasing years of built up tension with the only weapon he has at hand), and for some reason I’ve woken up with a look that would make your nanna clutch a little more tightly to her bag if we passed each other on the street.

At the station, we meet two individual travellers (Peck and Yuri), who, because they are both Asian, us whiteys think they are travelling together. Singaporean Peck is on her in between jobs three week European adventure and Japanese Yuri is on a quiet and humble year long world odyssey (Mary Poppins if you're wondering). An old Spanish woman spots us and through our broken Spanish and her non-existent English we broker a deal to stay at her pension, with an alleged bus ride to her place. This bus turns out to be a public bus, but her pension is right near everything pretty and was super chilled. From the window, snow capped mountains backdrop a 17th century church and surrounding Moorish influenced town buildings. The alley below is quiet and lead onto a small square of cafes, restaurants and tourist info boxes. We dumped our stuff, showered and headed out for the day. The nearby tourist box provided us with maps and an idea of what to see, and we wandered about the back street bazaars, marvelling at the colourful silks, dangly pokey-outy eye thingos and trinkets ready made for breakage in your bag on transit home. Mum was having issues with her knees and we called past a chemist to grab some braces. We decided to head north along the river and up the hill to check out the Alhambra from a different vantage point. Along the way, we stopped to watch a painter do his thing in a public square. In his sights was a girl quietly sitting and writing in her journal. Something about her said English speaking and we start chatting to her. Jordan, an American girl over here studying Spanish, was so happy to meet up with some fellow English speakers, spent the rest of the day with us, guiding us through the back streets and showing us some of her favourite little hidden spots on the hill. I think she wants to adopt my mum. Jordan invites us to a flamenco dance performance later that night and after dinner, we meet up with her again. Set in the bunker like cellar of a building built in 1600 and something, the flamenco was cool to watch, with an old guy in his 70s belting out some of the most passionate and powerful singing I’ve heard out of anyone. After it finishes, a reggae and funk dj starts spinning tunes and we have some drinks and dance. Mum looked like she was having fun all night.

The next day we tour the Alhambra. Yuri is headed to Morocco, her time is limited in Granada and she doesn’t join us. We get up early to catch the lighter crowds and find that every other tourist in town have also taken this option. After queuing for about 40 minutes, we are let into this amazing place, which had a similar feel to it as some of the Turkish influenced places I visited in Hungary. Wonderfully ornate wall carvings, elaborate ceilings and infinitely complex mathematical patterns overloaded my eyes. The drabness of the Charles the V Christian architecture when contrasted against the ornate visual orgy of the Islamic architecture emphasises the sacrilege that occurred here. Mum gets emotional a few times and this warms my heart.

Afterwards, Peck, mum and I go have lunch, rest a bit and then jump a three hour train to Cordoba.

Gold, Frankincense and Pigeon

2007-06-01T13:18:00.000+02:00

I arrived in Barcelona a day earlier than mum so I could get my bearings, suss out if our welcoming host was a psycho and make mum's arrival as easy as possible. The plan was to stay with a couchsurfer for the first couple of days and then switch to a hotel or pension (the mezzanine of accommodation between hostel and hotel - sort of like the casa particulars in Cuba, but with less I may get stabbed in my sleep feeling). When I arrived in Barcelona, I didn’t get the same buzz I normally got when I touched down in a new country. Sure the place has karaoke singing, abuse yelling taxi drivers, but it felt more like I was going somewhere for a conference or a business meeting than an extension of my travels. The next couple of weeks with mum were an unknown to me and I was a little nervous about how things between us were going to pan out. I hopped on th airport bus, made my way into town, met up with Pauletta, worked out what to see while in town and made sure the airport bus was a simple connecting journey rather than a Broadway stage production. Over a beer and paella, Pauletta prepared me for the journey ahead. I put myself into super tourer mode, pulled all the experiences from transit from the past year and focused them on making mum’s trip an easy one. I worked out an easy walking tour around the nearby area so that when mum arrived after her 30+ hour flight, we could tackle her jetlag without really challenging her physically. All that was left in the equation was mum.

The day arrives and I head out to the airport to greet mum. I’ve got times and plane numbers written down and discover her plane is delayed by 40 minutes. This gives me time to grab some bus tickets back into town, have a little food and make a sign saying “Mum” to hold up at the arrival gates. The time comes and I squeeze into a choice position right in front of the gates so the first thing mum would see is me and the sign. There’s the usual delay of baggage collection and eventually cases start coming out of the gates with her flight number written on them. Ten minutes passes. Twenty. Thirty. Forty. Hmmm.. where the hell is mum? Maybe she missed her connecting flight. I go over to an internet kiosk and quickly check my email to see if she’s sent me a mail. No mail. I send her an email asking where she is. I then hang out in front of the gate again. No mum. An hour after the plane touched down I still can’t see her anywhere. I venture over to the front desk for the airline she flew with and ask them if they can tell me if she was on the flight. They tell me due to privacy laws they can’t. I tell them that it’s my mum who is in Europe for the first time, show them the sign I made and give them my best desperate face. The woman behind the glass exchanges a look with her colleague, asks me to write my mum’s last name on a piece of paper, takes the paper and presses a finger to her lips. After a few seconds on her computer, she points to her name badge. THERESA and nods. Mum was on the flight. So where the fuck did she get to. I walk back to the gates and mingle a bit more, fidgeting with my camera I had planned to use to capture the moment she walked through the gates. Then a horrid thought crosses my mind. Maybe she doesn’t know to come out the gates and is standing by the luggage carousel waiting for me to pick her up. This is only 30 metres from where I was standing, but there's big red lines painted on the ground between me and the gates, with DO NOT ENTER clearly marked in several languages on the automatic doors leading to the baggage collection area. I try and steal a glimpse here and there. No good. Unless I go through the gates, I can’t test my theory. I pick my moment and just as a group of Japanese tourists come through the gates and a guy is being taken off in handcuffs in the other direction I slip through the gates and into the restricted zone. Within five seconds I find mum wandering around in a confused daze, looking stressed and worried. I suppress my frustration and wrap my arms around her, saying she's a silly sausage for not going through the doors. We go through the white, speak English express line in customs and jump on the bus headed for downtown Barcelona.

We’re off to a good start.

On the way back into town, I point out a few things I spotted on my first day and tell her about the next couple of days. Mum is tired from the 32 hour commute and a little dazzled at the busyness of Barcelona. We get to our stop and take a metro back to the flat, meet up with Pauletta and sit. It’s been a long way for mum and we take things slowly. My pace of travel needs to be hedged back so that she can keep up. Mum has a shower and understands why she must stay up until her normal bed time, but the lack of decent sleep on the plane means she’s been mostly awake for the last 45 hours and it shows. We wander around the back street markets, take coffee at a café, stumble on a couple of street performers and mum passively soaks in her new surrounds within the confines of her jetlag induced concussion. Churches, buildings and houses older than the European history of our home country floor mum and I stand back, watching her rural Victorian perception of the world be blown apart by the history surrounding her on all flanks. Sure mum knows her European history, but books, TV shows and university lectures can’t compare to the experience of actually being there. Our wandering through the back streets of the old part of Barcelona suits mum's current mental state. She loves taking photos of graffiti. Not sure why, but every piece we come across she stops and snaps a few shots. Check out her flickr site and you’ll see plenty of graffiti she sees during her day. I guess when you live out in Salisbury, the shelter at the local bus stop is as close as you’ll get to a gallery. Some of the Spanish work is really ornate, with that look that you only get with the European brand of artistic vandalism. We stumble onto some markets I had found the day before, and with their likeness to the Central Markets, mum feels a bit more at ease. We check out the main tourist strip, but to my relief this doesn't appeal to mum. Later, we grab a beer and mum hits the wall at around 9pm. Rest at last.

Over the next couple of days, we toured around more of the old city, checked out some Gaudi buildings and did some much needed planning for our onward journey. The Gaudi Cathedral didn't do it for me. Sure it's different, but to me it just looks like a gigantic pile of gothic-styled bat guano. Give me Hundertwasser anytime. There were some tense moments where the gap between my pace and mum's had to shift on both sides. But eventually after telling each other to pull our heads in, the painful gap between reality and expectation is crossed and there is a truce. Our visit to the Catalaunian Art Museum was a fab experience. The buliding and view is worth the walk up the stairs, as long as you can prevent your mum getting abducted by the gypsies on the way. We grab our tickets and just as we go to look at the art, a small orchestra of wind instruments is preparing itself to start in a nearby hall. We follow them in and take our seats in a room fit for a 16th century king's dance party and the show begins. Still tired and overwhelmed by the experience that is Barcelona, the music touches mum and she begins to weep at the majesty of it all. I lean over and whisper "Just think. Every moment of every day of your life, something this beautiful is happening in the world. I wish I could give you what I've seen over the past year and a half." The rest of the day was full of these little moments as this was mum's first European art gallery. And even though a handful of the works inside carried big names, it was the shear size of the collection that blew mum's mind. After the gallery, we wandered around the surrounding gardens and also checked out the 1992 Olympics site, which is a quick walk from the Museum. Impressive looking monument thingo with the stadium's cafe showing the Monaco Grand Prix on the telly. I bought a hotdog, mum bought a beer and we chatted about the day's arty adventures to the backdrop of screaming F1 cars.

I've always wanted to see another person's Shibuya moment. You know those times when you wish you had a photo of yourself gaping stupidly at the miscellaneous grandeur before you? In 2005, I walked out of the Shibuya metro station in Tokyo, soaked in the view before me and my head promptly melted away. A true Kodak moment. But watching mum bounce between paintings and sculptures (many with dates proceeding white settlement in Australia), and seeing her sweet sentimental soul soak up a thousand years of history had a more sustained quality to it than a Japanese 23rd century culture shock.

This trip is going to be fun.

When I was a young boy...

2007-05-25T13:35:00.000+02:00

If you know me at all, it might come as a surprise that I am currently travelling with someone I’ve quite often described as the most annoying person in my life. But a moment on the flight over to Cuba changed all that.

As I looked out at the lights of Miami on the horizon, Pioneer by the Split Enz played on my MP3 player and it suddenly dawned on me: My mum is cool. I thought about it more and the realisation started to seep into every part of my being. My mum is responsible for my love of music, art, culture and a curiosity about the world that has lead to this crazy year of travel. When I was a kid, mum would take me into the then 5MMM and sit me in the studio while she did her radio program. I was dragged along to performances by U2, Dire Straights, Crowded House, Hoodoo Gurus and countless Adelaide pub bands. Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Led Zeplin ...... were all regulars on the stereo, something some of my friends parents didn't even have. Mum was on Sale of the Century back when Tony Barber and Alice Platt were in charge of things and won a pair of electric scooters (Although, she still refuses to show me the tape). My lefty sensibilities were drummed into me from an early age with “Bring Back Gough”, “NO DAMS” and “Nuclear Free Zone” badges stuck to the fridge. I was the little kid at anti war / nuclear / something-not-quite-socialist-enough demonstrations, which generated a healthy dose of cynicism towards the government and all things in charge. I was at the “This is not a fucking test transmission” launch of Triple J in Rymal Park. When I turned 14, it seemed perfectly natural for me to start doing Rock n Roll High School, with the 3D Radio veterans of the time already knowing who I was. “How’s your mum?” they would ask. While going through a marriage breakup and dealing with a troublesome son, she held down a job and managed to finish off a uni degree at Flinders, majoring in film, Latin American history and language.

All of this welled up inside of me and I began to cry. I'm such a sook these days, but really I got quite emotional. Regardless of all the shit that has happened and how frustrated I get with her at times, she’s still a pretty cool lady. And she’s my mum. A plan formed in my head. I would go to Cuba then travel to Central America and work my way down to Argentina where I would meet mum and travel about South America for a month or so, allowing her to soak in the culture she studied and the language she loves.

Then I got mugged in Havana and lost my nerve to travel.

I still knew that travel with mum would be a great idea, but the idea of doing it in another sketchy country was really daunting. I was missing home and the last thing I could think of doing was Sheparding my mum through dodgy little villages and cramming onto stinky, falling apart buses. But I had already seeded the idea of travel in mum’s head and I didn’t want to let her down. Combined with wanting to get back to Europe for Eurovision and summer in Berlin, I figured Spain was a good compromise. A plan formed and flights were booked.

I was going travelling with my mum. My sister said I was crazy. I agreed.

Getaway in Stockholm

2007-05-23T22:48:00.000+02:00

At about 7am I get up and Thomas and I grab a quick bite to eat in the crew’s galley. From what’s on offer, the range is healthy enough to prevent scurvy and varied enough to avoid cabin fever for those working on the boat. After eating I go out on deck and watch the Swedish Archipelago pass by. Truly beautiful stuff. Reminded me a bit of the Hawkesbury River area near Newcastle. I meet Joakim (a photographer from the Swedish national broadcaster), and we exchange the usual Nikon vs Canon jibes with one another, like snowboarders and skiers would on a chairlift. Aside from his Nikon infraction, he’s quite a nice guy. I tell him that’s it ok, and that even some of best friends are Nikon users. After the ferry ride into Shanghai last year I made up my mind that the best way to arrive in a port city is by boat, to see the place as people have been seeing it for centuries. Stockholm certainly falls under the must be seen for the first time by boat category. As the city starts to come into view, Joakin gives me a guided a by finger tour of the place, and I occasionally confuse 17th Century churches with fun park attractions, a huge sports dome for a gas container and a communications tower for a Soviet fashioned evil genius’ not so secret military fortress. The little islands we pass have quaint red painted shacks and pretty mini-forests and petite jettys for docking one’s pleasure craft on. We begin to pass old customs houses and shipping warehouses that were built before Dirk Harthog smelt a wattle and after rounding a bend, the city reveals itself. Beautiful old buildings line the shore, sail boats dot the harbour and brides join the small islands together. Church steeples, clock towers, rock faces – awesome.

I go below deck and rejoin Thomas. We meet Monika again and we grab another bite to eat. I then return to the cabin to collect my stuff, while Thomas goes on a staff discount scout of the duty free store, later returning with the gift of chocolate from Monika, a gift that keeps on giving. We abandon ship and walk into the centre to grab a grab a coffee and get a quick orientation of the place. Emails are checked and plans for Sweden and the future are discussed. After a couple of hours, I say goodbye to Thomas and write a few emails and contact my host. I have some time to kill before finding my place, dump my bag with a kind café owner and do a little exploring by foot around the old town. Little cobblestone alleyways lead you to other cobblestone alleyways in a dizzy maze-like old school mess. Colonel Light and Escher would have a tiff and then spend the day walking around in silence if they came here for their honeymoon.

My host is a Chinese exchange student who has been studying here in Sweden for the last year or so. He lives in Rinkeby (pronounced Rink-a-boo), an area unofficially used for years by the Swedes to house all the immigrants in one convenient spot. 50 years ago you would have found only Finnish people there. Now the place resembles Sydney Road in Melbourne, with people from the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia. South America all living together in the one spot. Rinkeby is a fairly unique place, as there are the children of immigrants here that are in their late teens that have not learnt Swedish and keep pretty much to the small communities created by their fellow countrymen. Rinkeby-Swedish, a dialect which has been born from these conditions, is now spoken by 8% of the Swedish population. I’m no cunning linguist, but hasn’t this been the way new languages have formed since our caveman like relatives started blabbering a few million years ago? People move, new mother tongues are born.

Anyhoo..

The next day I rented a bike and rode everywhere that little guy would take me. I got a closer look at my evil genius’ not-so secret base, the fun park church, but missed out on the stadium-sized gas tank. I listened to the radio all day, bouncing between Swedish talkback and 80s flashback. I rode through a field full of lush green grass to the Eurhythmics’ Sweet Dreams; caught up on my Germanic language through an interview with Tim Burton; got busted singing Prince’s Kiss near the shore opposite the fun park by a couple of surly looking old Finnish fisherman (say hat 10 times fast); and there was a brief moment during Huey Lewis and The News’ The Power of Love where I hung onto the car I was riding beside. This moment was one that will treasure for the rest of my life.

I didn’t do my usual thing where I take an infamous car run and track it around the streets, but the Mabo of it was there. I did find a public bike pump and was disappointed that my tyres had ample pressure. The city itself reminded me a bit of St Petersburg, with the ornate old buildings set along water and less gypsies picking people’s pockets on pedestrian crossings along Nevsky Prospekt.

I didn’t really do much in the city other than ride around, hang out in cafes and frolic in the lush green grass of the outlying fields. I did meet a guy with a really nicely restored 1962 Volvo and complemented him on his Swedish pride. I had my first shot at playing a Playstation 3. Meh. Sure it has gorgeous graphics, but really not that much of an extension on game play in the same way the Wii is. A car game is still a car game, even when you can see the cars around you reflected in the virtual paintwork. On the subject of cars, I was surprised at the amount of classic American cars floating about the place. And in general, there were a greater number of flashier cars quite willing to run me over on my bike. This would be a good time to make a quick comment of the distinction between Swedes and Finns. I’ve found, and this is only my superficial impression, that Finnish culture and in general the people are a humble lot, keeping success, riches and achievement close to their hearts. One of the reasons I was so weirded out by seeing the 5 or so Hummers driving around Helsinki while I was there is that it didn’t match the idea of a Finn I had built up in my head. The Hummer to small city ratio was out of whack. But if you really want to put your Hummer/Small town ratio out of whack, visit Port Lincoln some time.

The trip back to Helsinki wasn’t as eventful as the trip over, but I did meet a group of teachers who I shared some fairly insightful conversations with about Finnish culture, living in Finland and even becoming a Finnish citizen. Kevin, one of the teachers, had come to Finland on exchange from Chicago back in 1984(?) when he was 15. A baptism of fire would be the best way to describe his experience. Don’t speak the language, don’t eat the food. Simple. Since then he’s become fluent in the language and has also spent time on a collection of southern Japanese islands teaching English between hopping between islands to attend all the different schools. A really interesting character and after we got into port, he and I went and had some lunch together. Over a coffee, I put to him my observation that there was something about the Finnish approach to respect and humbleness within the culture that reminded me of Japan. He agreed and articulated my anthropological ramblings in a much clearer way (which has since left me), but I’m glad to have found someone else that has an affinity and appreciation for both cultures. If anyone reading this is visiting the place, I thoroughly recommend meeting Kevin for a drink sometime.

Back in Helsinki, I stayed with Laila (another couchsurfer), who’s great fun to hang out with and can drink anyone under the table and through the floor if put to the challenge. Her obsession with Donald Duck comics, toasted Corinthian Piroshki and red wine made for another fun person hang with. I spent my last day in Helsinki with Maja (a journalist friend of Sofia), who showed me around the lakes and encouraged me to wear short shorts to go swimming in the freezing water. We took photos and now that May is about to tick over into June, there was plenty of falling asleep on the 'beach', soaking up the non-lethal sun to warm up with afterwards. Another great person to catch up with if I'm ever back in Finland.

Early next morning I was on a plane.
I saw The Alps from the air.
Now I’m in Barcelona.
With my mum.
Oh Lordi.

Will drive our ships to new lands

2007-05-19T22:52:00.000+02:00

There’s a saying in Helsinki that the largest building in the city leaves for Sweden every night. This isn’t not too far from the truth. The Viking ships which carry people between Finland, Sweden and Estonia are huge and would probably put up a good challenge if stood next one of the “skyscrapers” in the CBD.

A recap: I’ve just made it to the Helsinki-Stockholm Ferry and haven’t been able to secure a cabin for the night and have been instructed by the ticket seller that I should enquire about it while onboard.

With the uncertainty about if I’m going to be staying up all night guarding my stuff playing on my mind, a bright flash goes off and a smiling guy standing behind a camera thanks me in Finnish. I had just been captured by the ship’s photographer, and was quickly armed with the instruction on how to purchase the photo while on board. I see that he is using a 30D as well, make my usual comment (snap. pat camera at my side you got one too), and hand over a card. He thanks me for the card, I enter the ship thinking nothing more of it and stow my bag in the luggage room. Time to explore and find people to hang with. I see old people. Old people all around. It’s like pension day at a discount dentures store. They are everywhere. More chasing someone to chat to rather than to stay up all night drinking duty free booze while avoiding being busted in the corridors, I was looking for anyone under 40. I was expecting at least a smattering of people under thirty, even the odd middle ager, but no. Wall-to-wall mothballs and crochet. My host in Tampere said that this boat trip is a big part in the right of passage for Finnish youth. According to her, the Finns lose their virginity under three different conditions: On midsummer’s night, on this boat or on this boat on midsummer’s night, with the last one being a highly converted form of getting one’s cherry popped. The only thing at risk of being popped onboard tonight was someone’s hip joint while doing the maceraina. I go up to the top deck and watch Helsinki slip away from view, with the little islands in the bay, each with their own personality, sliding past he sides of the boat. The pointy fortress of Suomenlinna passes by. After that the islands thin out and for something that had been talked up quite a lot, the little islands come to unexpected and rather unsatisfying end.

I walk past a big display of all the photos taken earlier that day, and just as I spot my picture, the photo guy comes over and we start chatting. Travelling, photos and cycling. Turns out that he is has just signed up for couchsurfing, he will be doing a bike tour through Germany real soon and loves taking photos. After a bit of chatting I ask if he knows where I can ask about cabins and he just says "well, let's make this my first couchsurf. You can take the spare bunk in my cabin" Photographer. Cyclist. Couchsurfer. Friend.

Thomas asked me to swing by his stand at 11pm, so I kill time watching the on-board musicians going through the numbers, play with some video editing on my computer and occasionally go outside to soak in the 8-10pm twilight. I stand on the heliport and Led Zeppelin's The Immigrant Song plays in my head. Ahhh Ah. I get some stares. I've got to stop singing to myself, a curse left over from driving to Vegas without a radio. I go back inside and chat with a few other people on board. I go into the duty free store and start chatting with the bored looking girl who’s giving out free samples of chocolate and Baileys. She seemed happy to have someone interact with her on a deeper level than the primal grunts of ‘give me more baileys’ she had been getting all evening. I leave the store and spot a small group of spotty teenager boys and girls huddled around a non-functioning air hockey table, sneaking sips of poorly hidden vodka. I get the odd feeling that even though I once was a teenager, the thought of having some random 28 year old guy approaching me and a group of friends to strike up a conversation was something of an oddity, with the older person being relegated to the weirdo file soon after. I avoid talking with them and end up chatting to a bunch of older Swedish and British ladies who were celebrating the birthday of two of the girls in the group. “why are you talking to us love? You be off charming some young girl.”

11pm comes and I meet up with Thomas. He has some reprints he needs to process and takes me to the development machine room. The idea that the ship has its own photo lab astounds me. Even though I’ve often thought of being a photographer on a ship, capturing people’s holidays, but I never considered the printing. With the prints taken care of, we go grab a beer and then watch the dance show, with the Estonian and Russian dancers Thomas had befriended recently. Once the show ends, we join them in the stairwell (‘our change room’), behind the stage and drink champagne and with strawberries, while several infractions of the recently enforced no smoking on board policy occurring. I meet some of the members from the house band and get the impression that old soviet countries throughout Eastern Europe is where the richer, western countries source their entertainment from. When we finished the bottle of bubbles, we hit the dance floor in the discotek a few rooms over. By this stage I have a little booze under my belt (I’m a cheap date, it really doesn’t take much), I start dancing around like a bit of a loon, with the thought that I’m in a nightclub on a boat floating somewhere between Finland and Sweden giving me energy to bounce around. The music stops and the ugly lights come on at 2am and Thomas and I head back to the cabin. As soon as my head hits the pillow, I’m asleep, only waking briefly to catch a glimpse of Åland out of the curtains at 4am.

Tomorrow I will be in Sweden. Valhalla, I am coming!

Bork.

Moomin Mugs

2007-05-18T20:38:00.000+02:00

Once the circus that was Eurovision had moved on for another year, Helsinki returned to its quiet little self, albeit with a few more stains on the stairs of the big white church. Sofia was taking off on a three week holiday to the Denmark and Hungary, so it was time to do a bit more Couchsurfing. I stayed with Aikku and her four or was that five.. No, six. No, three flatmates around the corner from Kamppi. Unfortunately, the sneezing I had earlier in the day had turned into a bit of a loogie by the next morning, turning me into a snot monster for the day. The weather was cruddy and I spent most of the afternoon hiding out in the music library, occasionally escaping for fish soup and coffee. I trawled through a bunch Suomi labelled music, finding fuzz rock, electro and the all important obligatory Finnish metal. Talk about melancholy and the infinite sadness. This country is a very cold and dark place during the winter, which has rubbed off on some of the musicians. I get back to the flat and tell Aikku what I’ve been doing and her and her flatmate hand over even more music. One group who have been getting fairly good play on my MP3 player is Magyar Posse, who produce a sound pretty similar to Mogwai and Godspeed – I recommend listening to this while walking around shopping centres.

The next day I pack some clothes into my Eurovision satchel and bus the 50kms East to Porvoo, where Sid, Ninnu and Ronja reside in amongst the forest. I stayed with these guys last year through Couchsurfing after Pip and I emerged from Russia. They were a breath of fresh western air after the three months of Japan, China, Mongolia and Russia I had endured and now I was back in Finland, I would have been quite the bastard if I didn’t pay them a visit. Sid (American), and Ninnu (Finnish) met six years ago while they were backpacking separately through Eastern Europe. They fell in love, married, with Ronja coming along a couple of years later and now they live in beautiful little Porvoo. They feed me and we chat for a couple of hours about what’s been going on over the last eleven months. Ninnu already has plans to go out on a ladies night and Sid and I hang out at the flat, playing with cameras, drinking wine and talking shit until the wee hours. In the morning, we drive out to Ninnu’s sister’s place, where some of her family have assembled to help build a patio deck for the summer. Sid mixed concrete and Ninnu's dad built foundations with bricks and holes in the ground. Not of any use to the construction site, I went on a bike ride through nearby forest. Did you know that 61% of Finland is covered with forest? I guess this is why their paper is so good. In the forest, I sat with the trees and lounged with the grass, listening to bees buzz around their hive while I watched the clouds slip by from the perspective of the weird moss that only seem to grow up here. Lots of sun and laziness. When I got back, I was put in charge of looking after four girls, all under the age of four. No one is mortally wounded under my watch, but a piano was played, cars clambered upon, trees climbed and cake & tea was enjoyed.

I stay another night in Porvoo, using the next morning to hang out with Sid, Ninnu and Ronja to say my goodbyes. It'll be a long time before we see each other again. We ate porridge, drew postcards, drank from Moomin mugs and rode through the forest (much greener and lusher than the one from the previous day), a place where I enjoyed riding through so much last year. It felt a bit weird saying goodbye to them, especially when it got to the bit "you're welcome any time you come to Austr..".I pause half way through saying Australia, and in a split instant I consider my future. Coming to Porvoo again has allowed me to reflect on the year that was. The adventures on bikes, other people’s couches and far off lands. It really has been a crazy year, filled with extreme highs and lows, exploring the four corners of my head and seeing plenty of the world along the way. Now that I've reflected on the last 12 months, thoughts on what to do with the next 12 begin to solidify. Eee gads. There are long term plans afoot.

When I get back to Helsinki I head to Aikku's to pick up my main pack, and out of the half dozen people that frequent her house, no one is home. I phoned and get no answer. I killed a bit of time at a cafe across the street and call a few more times, getting an empty line. About an hour later, I try knocking at the door again and a rather hung over Aikku answers the door. A big night. I collect my stuff, say my goodbyes and walk to the Viking Line office near to the centre. When I get there, they can’t sell me a ticket as the boat is too close to departing and tell me to get my arse down to the terminal to buy my ticket there. Arg… I speed walk with my pack the 3km to the terminal and the girl sells me a ticket for travel, but says she can’t sell me a bed spot as it is too close to the departure time. She says I need to ask on board about upgrading my ticket to get a bed and wishes me a safe journey. I walk up the gangway and think to myself, “Great. No place to sleep. This is going to be a fun night.”

Screw Beijing, 2008 is all about Belgrade

2007-05-15T21:11:00.001+02:00

The Eurovision Song competition is like a musical based on the last two hundred years of European politics. War wounds and old grudges supposedly dissolved by treaties, unions and handshakes are still alive and well. The songs apologise for past mistakes, display Big Four arrogance or give a country the chance to put its best foot forward in a celebration of new found national identity. This is why Russia will never win, the UK will always suck, Germany will always be happy and fun loving, Eastern Europe will dominate the competition for the next decade and why Cyprus' 12 points will always go to Greece.

Eurovision has entertained me for about eight years now, and when Tim Clark attended the 2002 show in Tallinn, I’ve imagined sitting in some far off land watching the freak show unfold on stage in front of me. For an Australian, once you’re overseas, you are overseas. Jumping countries, oceans and time zones doesn’t matter to us, just as long as we don’t go back home in between. It’s not that we don’t like Australia, but the time and money involved in leaving means that once we go, we go properly. Even my tangent journey through Cuba, Mexico and the US couldn’t stop me going. Those travels had to be truncated and adjusted to fit around my bad pop music schedule. My own Eurovision experience began in March last year, on a boat bouncing around the choppy waves of the Japan Sea. While I nursed a good dose of embarrassment and a fresh gash to my forehead over some beers, my Finnish saviour/captor explained to me (in the Mika Häkkinen voice all Finnish men seem to have), his country's entry to the 2006 competition: “We will win Eurovision this year. We have a Monster Rock entry. Lordi.” – His black clothing and long blond hair gave him the authority to speak on monster rock, but not Eurovision. I questioned a country’s logic behind entering a rock band with cookie monster vocals into a competition traditionally full of formulaic pop songs, but he was addiment. Finland would be victorious. Jump forward a couple of months to a dinner party in St Petersburg, where the hosts [a couple in their forties who frequent the Tuska (Finnish for severe pain) festival], were expressing their joy that a monster rock band, as ludicrous as they were, took home the prize. This as the first chace I had got to vew the performance, and from that moment, Finland’s genius was apparent. Then in August last year at the Sziget festival, I met Sofia, a Finnish newspaper and radio journalist. We were the sole representatives from our respective countries and after bonding over shots of Unicum and late night dancing, an invite to Helsinki was extended to me.

The day of the competition arrives and Sofia and I take the four Melbourne tram stops to the Hartwall Areena where the show is being held to collect my media pass. I was a little nervous, as the confirmation email I sent back acknowledging my accreditation hadn’t been replied to, and I feared that my trip to Finland may have been in vain. We enter the press centre, pass through the metal detectors and x-ray machines and head for the accreditation stand. I present my ID and the girl behind the counter types a few things into the computer. “Sorry. You’re not on the list.” Crestfallen, I explain the email conversation with the media rep where I had been granted a pass but hadn’t received confirmation and the girl asks me to wait while she speaks to her boss. She comes back and says that everything is cool. I sit, my photo is taken and my pass is printed out. This makes my day. Sofia expresses her disappointment that she had forgotten to apply for a pass and I ask her to wait while I collect my orientation pack.

The press area was a space where a family of jumbo jets would consider settling down in, raising a few Cessnas and maybe even digging a veggie patch. The huge space was dotted with little areas where people could just chill out and watch the competition or interview the stars, with various stalls and rooms devoted to the different elements of entertainment news making. Clusters of journalists had claimed their spots, swapping contact details in a display akin to an American Psycho business card exchange session. Finnish volunteers would dart between the groups, handing out little messages or running miscellaneous errands from one side of the room to the other. I collected my orientation pack (a black kannettava tietokone bag with colourful, Marimekko designed Eurovision graphics sprawled in one corner), and took a tour of the media area, soaking in the grand concept that I, after eight years of following it, was at Eurovision. I wanted to keep the tour quick, but my legs involuntarily walked me to a door marked “Canon professional photography services”. Within, I found two guys in full photographer regalia (think vests with pockets), one busily working away at a rather lusty looking camera, the other giving me a big smile welcoming me to his stall. I ask if they do sensor cleaning, expecting the usual “no, but we know a place in a far off land where you can get it done for €60 and it will take about a week” answer. What I got was: “Yes, free and we can have your camera back in 15 minutes. How does that work for you?” For the second time in the last 10 minutes my day is made. The guy behind the counter then starts showing me an unfamiliar, but impressive looking Canon camera. The €4,000 EOS-1D Mark III. Umm.. yeah.. wow. This tech is a serious piece of hard-core camera porn and I fondle it for a bit.

I leave the service booth to tell Sofia what’s going on, and almost bump into her as I walk out the door. It appears she had talked her way into getting a last minute press pass. Nice work. Her work gives her a totally legitimate reason for getting one, just totally forgot to apply when she was supposed to. We walk past one of the massive plasma screens where the previously dispersed crowd had gathered and we’re informed that the full dress rehearsal was about to commence. I pick up my camera and rejoin Sofia. The demon guy beckons the audience to walk through the vail of smoke and disappears. Cue awesome video. dramatic helicopter shots of arctic landscape; Exploding ice; monsters running about the place changing into wolves. The sort of images I would have loved on my quilt covers as a kid. Simply awesome. As the pre-packaged footage dissolved into the live performance from the nearby auditorium, soaring power cords and flames fly from the guitars while Mr Lordi stands at the end of the catwalk holding a fireworks spewing axe over his head. In his other hand, a microphone to scream the lyrics from Eurovision’s highest scoring song ever, “Hard Rock Hallelujah”. It was at this moment the weirdness of returning to Helsinki melted away and like a bed in a hotel with overzealous cleaning staff, my day was made for a forth time.

We then left, on the hunt for outfits for the evening. I had the plan to be the best dressed photographer there. Judging on the early look in at the competition; anything with a collar was going to suffice. I had suit tunnel vision and after flaking out on a perfect three piece in Tampere (€40 is a bit steep for a one time use suit), I was desperate. Sofia informed me that that day was €1 day at the national op-shop chain store UFF. At the most, I’d be dropping about €5 to look the shit for the evening. But as soon as we entered the first store, which was seething with people and looked as if it had come off second best with a mechanical ransacking machine, I knew landing something snazzy would be a challenge. There were no complete suits and my only options were mixed trouser jacket combinations that did not do my chances of best in show any good. Sofia managed to land a cute little red dress straight away, a world first for a male/female shopping team. Deciding not to waste time calling Guinness, we headed to the next UFF, passing a few groups of people sporting the distinctive yellow bag and found the same situation. No clothes and the results of an all conquering Ransack Machine. I was beginning to panic; with my suit pipe dream looking like it was coming to an abrupt end. We headed to the next and final store, and it looked worse than the others. Every rack empty, except for the occasional Makita hat and lonely shoe. I look at the attendant in despair and she points to a set of stairs leading to a big basement crawling with eager shoppers and chock full of racks of clothing. Pay dirt. After getting into a discussion with a Finnish rapper, I eventually went home with a speckled number and a stripy orange shirt with matching 70s tie. Sofia and I returned to her flat where we met up with her boyfriend and a couple of their mates. We drank Russian Champagne and tasty Romanian vodka, celebrating a day well done.

Unfinished champagne bottle in hand, we arrive at the venue an hour or so early and separate so that Sofia and Antti can grab their assigned seats. I enter the press zone and start mingling with the now much larger crowd of journos and media types. I meet Latvian, Spanish, Finnish, British, Ukrainian, Armenian, Serbian, Russian… you name it, I met it. The UK people were far too important to chat to me, the Finnish were out in force, the Czechs were swimming in beer and the Russians were easily the best dressed of the night. When it neared the time for me to leave and head over to the show, the Ukrainians corralled me into their corner of tables and plied me with some fairly nice vodka from their home country. I see the clock, freak and run out of the building. I run all the way to the venue, discovering half way that my new woollen suit was not really cutting out as something to exercise in. I make it to the door, where I am informed that no pro cameras are allowed in the venue. Bummer. I check the camera and find the way to my seat. I enter just as Lordi are walking out onto stage. There is a little confusion with the security guy, but I managed to get my seat as the pre-recorded operatic section finishes and Lordi thump into their song. I swear, this is just what Eurovision needed. An injection of twenty hours no sunlight crazy from a little Scandinavian place like Finland. Sparks fly and I smell the burnt sulphur of the on-stage fireworks. I get comfortable and enjoy the spectacle, feeling I have so far had a pretty cool day. I have arrived.

As entertaining as the rest of the show was, there really wasn’t anything that out did the stage presence of Lordi. The roar after Hanna (the Finnish act), was deafening. Watching the small factions within the crowd jump up and go mental for their respective countries was a cool sight. The performers all went through their numbers, the stage team use a fancy grid system displayed on the floor video screens to perform complicated stage changes and a carefully choreographed camera crew run about with steadi-cams and swing crane mounted cameras. All invisible to the audience at home, but really exciting from a production point of view. Once all the bands had done their thing, I headed back over to the press area for the count. Thankfully the Magary Medal like drag of this part of the show has been stream lined in the last few years, relegating the first 7 votes to a quick graphic, saving the drama of the 8, 10 and 12 points to the country’s reps. This usually goes without a hitch, but the Slovenian girl (who said she was the previous year's entrant), was coked to the eyeballs and got distracted by singing and looked as if she forgot to read out the results. I can just imagine Terry Wogan ripping her a new one with his commentary. Once the count was nearing the end, Ukraine and Serbia became the two clear leaders. When it became clear who had one, all cameras were pointed at the Serbian media contingent, making them the stars of the night. The BBC group, who were the rudest people there, walked off in disgust, thinking they were the deserving winners of the night. Righto. Please for the love of all things holy; there is so much good English music. Take this competition seriously and don’t come back until Bill Drummond (a suggestion bounced around between friends), is onboard. The Ukrainians were graceful second place getters, with the realisation that the novelty act for the evening had already been and gone last year and that there was a few more bottles of vodka left. Not able to attend the after party, the stories I’ve heard since make it sound like that was the spectacle of the evening. The lead guy from Swedish group The Ark, who had convinced himself that victory was theirs, complained about the competition being rigged, got drunk, lost some clothing and started swinging punches with a group of jubilant Serbians. I’ve since been told that at a gig back in 2000, the guy swung naked from the rafters of the venue, while slurring along to the music. How very rock and roll.

A great time had by all, and depending on where I am this time next year, I might see you in Belgrade.

By the way, my mum is really cool. She just went to the Hill Top Hoods playing with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Nice one.

Shhh...

press pass

2007-05-12T19:48:00.001+02:00

Nuff Said

Go Finland...

sound protection

2007-05-11T23:08:00.000+02:00

After having a fab time in Providence and a great last day in New York (a thousand thankyous to the wonderful Audra), I flew from JFK to Dublin and spent 5 days readjusting to jet lag and hanging out with Clair, Allie & the funky bunch. Great to see these guys again, with glorious warm weather following me from New York. I'll write a little more on my final few days in the US and subsequent adventures in Ireland later, but I have a fresh adventure laying out in front of me to talk about.

I arrived in Finland a few days ago, hung out in lovely Tampere for a couple of days with my full-on London accented Finnish host and another traveller from Colorado. It's a beautiful little town, almost made into an island by the amount of lakes surrounding it. I purchased the tastiest doughnut I've ever eaten at the lookout tower and the mini-golf fun park frustrated me more than it should of. My cousin Judith, who's been in Finland for the last 5 months on exchange, lives there but was in Sweden during the time I was in Town. I forgot to put my battery in my camera during the walk I went on with the others, but after hearing the story of the 50-something drunk woman getting her kit off in the name of summer in front of the audience at a free outdoor concert, the forgotten battery seemed like a blessing. Earlier today, Travis (The American backpacker), and I hitched a ride down to Helsinki with a Finnish trucker. We used dance and two hand made sign (Helsinki Kiitos and Euroviisut), to land our lift. Our trucker bloke told us in nicely Russia-fied English that he imports cars from overseas and sells them to Russians who come over the border to purchase an "appearance of affluence increaser": Otherwise known as a 3 year old Peugeot.

Arriving in Helsinki was an odd experience. Our tucker mate dropped us off just out of town and Travis and I caught the bus in. As we got closer to the centre, we passed by places I recognised from a year ago. Oh there's where I stayed. Oh there's that park where that free concert was. There's the train station. Oh that's right, the trams do look like they're from Melbourne. While I've always wanted to go to Eurovision, I never thought when I eventually did that it would be in a place where I have personal history. Strange.

Anyhoo..

While in Tampere, I watched the semi finals on the telly with the others, occasionally getting a translation of the Finnish subtitles. I can't believe Czech Republic, with lyrics like 'I steal coins from the fountain near your cave and put them on the railway tracks', were eliminated. I'm glad Israel is out, because their song Push the Button, was rubbish but really catchy. I was surprised Austria, with their gay aesthetics and Bon Jovi/Backstreet Boy sounding song got cut. I thought Switzerland's DJ Bobo would have appealed to more mid20s Eurotrash fans as Vampires are alive didn't make the cut either. Andorra's Blink 182 rip off got the flick as the country is too small to actually host a Eurovision if they were to win. Bulgaria = Drums. Belarus has a nice Bond theme sounding diddy with secret stair staging. Well done Georgia for getting a birth on your first go, pity your song is 3 years old. According to the Finnish version of Terry Wogan, if Montenegro win they'll have to host the competition in Romania as they don't have enough money. Moldova's lass has some smutty pant thing going on. Norway's clothing tomfollery will have you wondering if there is going to be a Janet incident. Malta has a gong. The back up dancers from Estonia's entry look like the guys from Franz Ferdinand. Belgium's soft funk band has synchronised brass instruments. Slovenia has a Gothic operatic thing going on with the singer sporting a magic light up hand.

Tomorrow I hit the local op-shop circuit, purchase a fancy 70s suit (possibly safari), pick up my photo pass from the press centre and attend the final of Eurovision 2007, where the opening act is last year's winner Lordi.

Hard Rock Hallelujah.

Keep the fondue fires burning for me back home. Full wrap up in a couple of days.

Park Roles

2007-05-01T18:05:00.000+02:00

Coney Island is a sketchy place. It reminded me of a more established version of the inner part of the racetrack at the Oakbank Easter carnival. There has been talk about the whole place being bulldozed to make way for some fancy beach-side condos. According to one of the characters I chatted with, this has been something that's been talked about for years and he'll believe it when he sees it. I guess if you have a hankering for a dodgy entertainment throwback from yesteryear, get your skates on as the local rag (a little paper going by the name of The New York Times), with a quote from the mayor of NYC laying out some fairly serious looking redevelopment plans for the area.

On the subject of skates, I checked out Central Park, Harlem and surroundings. Harlem seems not to begin at the "Across 110th Street" mark as the Bobby Womack song would have you believe. Gentrification and the top crust of Manhattan property buyers have created a new area, SOHA (South Of HArlem). Well, actually a newish building development has acquired the name for a collection of ill-fitting modern inner city apartments. Seriously, how hard is it for architects to design a building that isn't a complete contrast to the older buildings around it? I know there is a certain amount of artistic flair an architect wishes to exercise when designing their buildings.. Anyhoo.. I wandered around Harlem, listening to a James Brown tribute playing on the local radio station in my headphones. Once I reached 125th street, things started to look a bit sketchy (cars on blocks, an inordinate amount of graffiti, odd looks indicating that maybe, possibly my kind did not belong in this hood), and I headed back down south, reaching Morningside Park, which eventually brought me to the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. From the outside, the Cathedral looked abandoned and in desperate need of repair. I asked a passing guy what the story was about the place, and he suggested I check out the back entrance just around the corner. Ok. I wander up to an open gate, walked in and found myself in a deserted carpark, with a security booth that looked as if no one secured the surrounding area in years. Things looked rather dodgy and sketch, but curiosity got the better of me and I went through a nearby door which had been left propped open. Inside I found a small, modern looking corridor which looked out of place. I sheepishly walked in, and a smartly dressed woman walked around a nearby corner. She startled me and I asked if it was ok for me to be in the building. She nodded and pointed to a bigger door further down the hall. I thanked her, opened the door and found myself in a fully functional, extremely large Church. A strong smell of frankincense greeted me as I realised that the 80 or so occupants of the church were in the middle of a fairly full on, organ backed Sunday hymn.

I left the Cathedral and walked south down Amsterdam Avenue, eventually finding myself standing, salivating in front of the Hungarian Pastry Shop. A desire for Magyarish cakes (laying dormant for six month), awoke and I entered. I was disappointed to find out that the only Hungarian member of the staff was off that day. No throwing around my bastardised Hungarian. I grabbed a coffee, a little cake and fell into a conversation about genetics with a couple of girls sitting at a nearby table.

With my coffee finished and the subject of nature verses nurture discussed, I ventured down to Central Park to meet up with Audra. I have a good hour and a bit to kill beforehand and use it to venture around the northern part of the park. People played their park roles well, sitting around, playing football, entertaining children with squirrel spotting, reading the paper or enjoying an ornithological telescopic warm, overcast day. I saw a woman appreciating a branch full of blossom and I think to myself that while skiers chase winter and surfers chase summer; at that moment I was quite content to chase spring forever.

I arrived at the meeting spot about 20 minutes early and the thud of a nearby bass bin toyed with my attention and eventually dragged me towards a large group of people. In the middle of the crowd is a small oval track full of skaters with the middle part populated by a DJ booth (thankfully not carnies). Eventually I meet up with Audra and after about 30 minutes of watching people pass by on tiny wheels, we venture south down through some of her favourite parts of the park. She points out sections and relates stories from her time working here on The Gates project. It seems that being on good terms with the new mayor of New York can even tolerate golf cart racers around Sheep’s Meadow. We hang out near the ice rink and watch the daylight disappear behind the skyline and the lights switch on in the nearby buildings. We grab some pretty awesome Turkish food in the Meatpacking district (you read that correctly), and head home.

The following couple of days I venture over to Queens and further explore the west village. I didn’t really get a good look at Queens (I was bummed that PS1 was closed), and ended up hanging out around the shoreline, watching helicopters take off in front of the UN. chatting to random Australians, discussing punk music with barristers and hearing about the dangers of Queens from a stationary shop owner (I’m ok as it’s hard to steal any amount of paper that is actually worth something). I get back to the apartment and I have an invite to Providence waiting for me, which nicely replaces my Hudson Valley adventure plans.

Pimped out friends

2007-04-30T14:46:00.000+02:00

I have been given a couple of list of people to meet and place to visit while here in NY, with about 6 names underlined as people I really must meet while I’m in amongst the big city lights. Some of them even came with a short description so I knew what to expect and who to contact for what. I make a plan with Betsy (one of Audra’s mates), to check out MoMa and catch a couple of other things. A plan is formed and we arrange to meet up in front of the gallery at 11am. Friday comes, Aurda takes off to Memphis for the weekend and I make my way through the pouring rain to the Museum of Modern Art. Not having a mobile (sorry… cell), and going by Audra’s “you’ll know her when you see her” description made the long line and the soggy cats and dogs. I didn’t a clue who I was looking for, but the name Betsy conjured up images of a 1950s burger joint waitress with a little paper hat and roller skates. I make a phone call, we find each other (no roller skates), and her membership card jumps us in front of the cue (like a British passport when immigrating to Australia does when faced with a “bunch of illegals” from Afghanistan), and we’re in. The place is pretty amazing, with a nice collection of photography on the top floor, a fancy lot of 1920-1950 surrealist, post-modern art and an entire floor devoted to industrial design (with an exhibit reflecting on design influences). All the while, Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi scribbled a huge variety of cartoons on the inside walls of the museum, with the help of a cherry picker. We grab food and then we headed for our next adventure: Zombie TV show pilot screening.

Betsy (and/or some of her mates), worked on developing a new TV series where in the first episode all of America’s dead people come back to life and try to fit back into the life they had before they died. The premise was an interesting one, as the idea approached the zombie genre from a different angle: Zombies with feelings. Rather than just a eat brains, shotgun heads gore fest, this pilot approached to the undead walking amongst us with a humility, humour and empathy not shown in any other production I’ve seen. The zombies.. .sorry… Returnees™ interact with the living and each other in a almost playful, slightly sinister way.

After that, Betsy and I headed for food and drinks at her favourite Mexican place. Good food and rather spicy margaritas. Outside the restaurant, a homeless guy got cleaned up in a hit and run. After watching the ambos sort the guy out, we met up with some of Betsy’s friends and found our way to the 2007 NYC Ukefest, a festival devoted entirely to Ukuleles. There were so many different types of little guitars there, ranging from those made of old cigar boxes that come in kit form for $40 to little Fender Stratocaster replicas at $1,700 a pop. There were performances by a few solo acts and little bands, with a performance by The Moonlighters as my highlight. After a couple of bevies I called it a night and headed back to the apartment, completely buggered from the day’s activities. I get an email from Audra saying she’ll be back in town in a couple of days and that she’ll give me a guided tour of her favourite place in New York: Central Park.

winding back a bit

2007-04-29T01:53:00.000+02:00

San Francisco still uses a fog horn.

Sorry, I just remembered this as being a really cool thing about the place, but had neglected to mentioned it until now. Thank the new Björk album for reminding me about this.

Now back to your regular scheduled programming.

A city that never sleeps.. ‘til Brooklyn.

2007-04-28T19:27:00.000+02:00

The place where I’ve been staying these last few days has been great, but my host Audra is still only present in emails. Right around the corner from Washington Square, at the southern end of 5th Avenue, my New York digs on West 8th Street are right in the thick of it.

I can walk to Wall Street in 20 minutes, Time Square in 40 and the water is about 30 minutes in either direction. Manhattan is a relatively easy place to navigate around. Avenues run north-south, streets run east-west. The distance between blocks on streets is shorter than avenues, each district waves flags of pride featuring its adopted name and the subway system is the quickest way to get around. Over the last 20 years, the city has been cleaned up and gentrified. Walk around the old artist areas of Greenwich, East Village and Soho, where all the huge studio apartments once ruled, and you’ll find ritzy clothing stores, “honest to goodness” not Starbucks (but really are if you ask), cafes and wheatgrass juice bars. I explore and find a couple of cafes, some of which had been recommended by friends who have visited NY before. I send an email thanking Audra for the accommodation and double check if I was meant to be sleeping on the couch rather than her bed. I hardly know this person, but she is totally cool with me just hanging in her apartment, using her stuff and eating the food in the fridge that would otherwise be going off.

On my third night in town, Audra came back to New York and took me out to dinner. This is the first time since the Grand Canyon that we’ve met, so we spend most of the meal sussing each other out. She works as a location manager in film & TV and has been up in Rhode Island working on her latest job, only coming back to her apartment in NYC every five days or so. She has worked on a bunch of other projects in the past (most notably The Gates), and has a true love for her job. We chat about the joys of meeting random people, discovering a stranger’s personality and how everyone has an interesting story, even if it’s just one. We go out for a drink (at an Australian bar), and I introduce her to Coopers. My homesickness grows.

and I squish you

2007-04-27T15:56:00.000+02:00

New York City, not only has a pulse. It has a fever. So many people. So much going on. So much history. A fantastic saturation of activity that I would, if experienced on a daily basis, find quite overwhelming. And that's just Manhattan. This place and the people who live here are what I want to be amongst. There’s so many little cultural nooks and crannies for people to wedge themselves into, it’s easy to see why everyone who visits finds a place to feel home. I know someday, even for a short while, I will live in this town.

I was always coming to New York, but it wasn’t until getting an invite from Audra (a random person I met on a frosty morning at the Grand Canyon), did I have a place to stay. When we met, we probably chatted for only about 10 minutes, swapped emails and parted company. This has been a fairly common interaction with people while I've been travelling and usually occurs with no follow-up. But three days later when I got back to San Diego, there was an email from her offering up her apartment as a place to crash while I was in the Big Apple. Amazing. But this was just the tip of the iceberg.

Once I finally got to New York, I landed in LaGuardia and my bearings weren’t up to scratch as to where the city was in relation to the airport. My single-serving friend on the plane had given me the quick run down on the public transport from the airport to downtown Manhattan, with my other seat neighbour drawing up a little map to help explain where stuff is in relation to the airport. As I was waiting for my luggage, I started talking motorbikes with an Argentinean mechanic who had just returned from working on a 250cc race in California. He and his friend were catching a cab into downtown Manhattan and I suggested we should split a cab. Grand. Not even an hour into my time in New York and already I was being driven in a yellow cab across Brooklyn Bridge with the lit-up 9pm skyline of Manhattan dazzling and sparkling across the water. On the way over we discussed travel, I shared the apples I had in my bag and discussed my desires to visit (and their experience of), the glacier and volcano area of Argentina. When we got to where I needed to get out, I tried to pay them my share of the cab fare, but they refused my money telling me I would probably need it. What a great introduction – free cab ride and a cautionary about me keeping an eye on my spending. At least it wasn’t the “proper foreigner” spiel I got from the immigration guy in London. The original plan was to call past a photo lab nearby to Audra's place and pick them up from there, but as it was now 10pm, the shop was nice and shut. I find my way to a café with wifi and get the plan b instructions for getting into the apartment. I phoned Audra and she phoned her flatmate, who thankfully was home and opened the door for me when I knocked.

The next day I spent walking the length of the southern part of Manhattan. I ventured down to the financial district to have a look at where the World Trade Centre used to be. Being in an area where an event that redrew the rules of the world and influenced major personal change occurred was a weird experience. Walking towards the site, a Back to the Future scenario played repeatedly in my head, where Marty McFly emerges from the subway, picks up a newspaper, reads the date and the camera pans around to finds the towers still standing there. Once I got to Ground Zero, I was disappointed with the plaques and tributes to the victims, with heavy use of emotive language and the vengeful tone some of them took.

One of the common questions you’ll find hidden amongst a long conversation these days (especially if you're from New York), is “so what’s your 9/11 story?” – and talking to Americans about their experience and the environment revolving around them at that time, you get an interesting variety of answers. This was one of my favourite responses to what the general feeling amongst the American people was during the aftermath: “We wanted to kick some ass. We just wanted the finger pointed at someone. Anyone! If Bush came out and told us Sweden did it, we’d have no problem invading them and kicking their blonde Scandinavian butts back to the ice age".

When I was in Hiroshima in 2005, I spent a day wandering around the Peace Park memorial reading the stories, looking at the exhibits and being quite. I found the language used to describe the bombing of Hiroshima from a Japanese perspective much more respectful, both to the memory of the victim and to the judgement of the reader than the boards twist tied to the cyclone fence surrounding Ground Zero. The Japanese presented the facts of what happened at the end of World War II neutrally (almost clinically), leaving the emotion to the personal stories of the victims. Not being a terribly big sop, I was surprised that for most of the time I was there I wept and sobbed. When I read the plaque at the A-bomb Dome (we leave this structure here in an effort to ensure that this never happens again), I spontaneously started to cry. Afterwards, I felt I walked away with a greater understanding of the victim's suffering and further questioned the mindlessness of war as a whole. All I walked away from Ground Zero feeling was disturbing sense of emptiness, a lack of grief (especially for a city I am smitten with), and a feeling that those who suffered at this place had been cheated by the memorial they had been given. I felt guilty that instead of being upset, I walked away thinking the terror involved here was no less terrible than that experienced within the confines of a conventional war between countries. I guess Japan was the surrendering party. Don’t get me wrong, what happened here 6 years ago was a terrible, horrible thing and my sympathies go out to all those who were touched by the shit that went down that day. I just wish my (and the rest of the world’s), compassion for America wasn't soured by the way the Bush administration reacted.

I imagined our leaders seizing upon this moment of unity in America, this moment when no one wanted to talk about Democrat versus Republican, white versus black, or any of the other ridiculous divisions that dominate our public discourse. I imagined our leaders going on television telling the citizens that although we all want to be at Ground Zero, we can't, but there is work that is needed to be done all over America. Our help is needed at community centers to tutor children, to teach them to read. Our work is needed at old-age homes to visit the lonely and infirmed; in gutted neighbourhoods to rebuild housing and clean up parks, and convert abandoned lots to baseball fields. I imagined leadership that would take this incredible energy, this generosity of spirit and create a new unity in America born out of the chaos and tragedy of 9/11, a new unity that would send a message to terrorists everywhere: If you attack us, we will become stronger, cleaner, better educated, and more unified. You will strengthen our commitment to justice and democracy by your inhumane attacks on us. Like a Phoenix out of the fire, we will be reborn.

And then came the speech: You are either with us or against us. And the bombing began. And the old paradigm was restored as our leader encouraged us to show our patriotism by shopping and by volunteering to join groups that would turn in their neighbour for any suspicious behaviour.

An except of a speech given by Tim Robbins to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. - April 15, 2003

Enough politics...

The water front was next on the cards, with a possible jaunt across the bay on the Staten Island Ferry up for grabs. I ventured around the water and ran into a Japanese guy taking a photo of a lamp post. He wasn’t actually taking a photo; he was making a frame with his hands to simulate what a scene would look like if he took a photo of it. This looked interesting so I started chatting to him, excitedly forcing my broken, unused Japanese upon him once I found out he was from Japan. We chatted for about 5 minutes and then parted ways, only to bump into each other again about 20 minutes later. We decided to hang out and catch the ferry together, comparing notes on what brought us to the big city. Koji had come to America to study English and work at his hairdressing career. The ferry ride took about an hour to the island an back again. On it I spoke with a lady from Scotland and a photographer working for the New York Times. Once Koji and I got back to Manhattan, we wandered up to the subway and separated at Time Square and I haven’t seen him since. I think this may have been my poor rendition of the OK boku jo (wave hands in the air) joke which seemed to work so well a year and a half ago in Japan.

Once I had my fill of Time Square (I hadn't realised that there are two corners covered with TVs and lights. I assumed that there was only one corner that regularly changed it's appearance), I headed over to 9th Avenue to check out the photographer's Mecca - B&H. It's a fairly impressive store, almost up there with the eye burning complexity of a Yodobashi Camera Mega Super Happy Fun Time Store. One of the first thing I noticed about B&H is that the majority of staff are Jewish Orthodox (with the hole skull cap and ringlet thing going on), a sight that isn't that common in Australia. I ventured over to the lighting department first as I'd been flirting with the idea of rigging up a hand flash unit after seeing some guy in SF use one. The guy serving me was totally enthralled by his Windows solitaire game, and flicked between that and condescending answers when I asked questions about flashes. I figured he was either a jerk or was just having a bad day and moved over to the lens department, where a few smiles were floating about behind the counter. I lucked out and got another jerk, sighing, groaning and yawning (a little too dramatically), while I asked to look at a few lenses. I guess you can get away with being a total douchebag when you work at one of the best know camera stores in the world.

Jaded and empty handed (I need passion from my sales assistant to part with my money), I walked down 9th Avenue, then hit 8th on my way back down south towards 5th avenue, seeing little famous bits here and there along the way. I somehow ended up at Madison Square Gardens and spoke to John for a little while, then beelined straight back to home base. It seems that ever since being mugged, I have a subconscious almost Cinderella alert that says "It's going to get dark soon. That's when pumpkins turn into thugs and then you get robbed". Audra was still out of town, so I made food for me and her flatmate, who then proceeded to tell me about this guy that she just met who was putting all this heavy emotional stuff on her in the early stages of their friendship. She explained the relationship, the difficulties of working with the guy and the back story to her life, the universe and everything. I agreed saying it would put me in an awkward position if someone who I had just met started unloading all their troubles and emotions onto me - then said goodnight and went to bed.

New York City

2007-04-25T05:42:00.001+02:00

wow

Cross dressing in Montana

2007-04-24T08:53:00.001+02:00

As the previous post details, getting to Bozeman Montana was a trial. But why am I here? Last year while I was in Hungary, I met an inordinate amount of Americans either travelling or studying there. And while staying with Andy and Laurie in Budapest, I was hooked in to a constant supply of Yanks, Canooks and Aussies. One of the groups I had the pleasure of meeting was Erin, Lorie and Charlie – the Montana Massive. They were a lot of fun to hang out with while they were in Budapest, giving me a nice hot dose of Western, native English speaking culture. As always while travelling, when you meet someone on the road, the age old offer of a place to stay when you’re ever in either one’s home country is put on the table. At that stage I had no plans to come to the States on this trip, but I thanked them for their offer and returned the gesture. Fast forward to March this year, when, by accidental design I arrive in California and by chance, the Montanans get curious about my whereabouts and look up my blog. They email me, and within a week a plan forms to go to Montana and check out their home town.

Just writing this now, half a dozen offers of a place to stay or a person to catch up with have flooded back to me. The Peace Core girls in Mongolia. The couple from Alaska who found my email address in a book left in a hostel in Pingyao. The retired couple travelling the Trans Siberian who had a collection of ducks I wanted to meet. The dudes in Budapest who christened their local bride “Steven Colbert”. The shit tonne of Mormons (Hungary, Germany, Mexico) who, for better or worse, have invited me to Utah.

Montana is gorgeous. This truly is a beautiful part of the world. I can understand why people are proud to be from here. But the vibe I found here was a little unexpected. The people love and respect their guns, but are fairly liberal minded. Aware of the environment around them, Montanan ranchers are more in-line with Gore inconvenient attitudes than the Bush Clear Sky attitudes. The small town attitude carried by the young people here is complimented by an understanding for the world outside and appreciation for further education. As the Rocky Mountains track their way through the State, a diversity of landscape opens up and different subcultures develop. To the people from the plains, the mountains are full of hippie Democrats. To the people from the mountains, the plains are full of Republican hicks. There doesn’t seem to be much of a tolerance for gay men here (Brokeback Mountain wasn’t able to be filmed there because locals didn’t think that real cowboys sniffed each other’s shirts), but the governor is looking to become energy self-sufficient within 15 years through bringing in hundreds of wind turbines. One thing that impressed me (being the tree hugging, snowboarding, constantly at odds with the environmental consequences of my hobbies person I am), there is a snow resort up here that only uses green energy to power their lifts and resort facilities. As long as you are an environmental rancher with a taste for the outdoors, women, steak, snow and guns, Montana appears like the place to be.

Waking up super early and missing breakfast to go to Salt Lake City airport to make sure my bag was checked in on the correct flight, I was told that there was no need for me to recheck the bag manually and that it had been put on the Bozeman flight. I walked away from the baggage counter in a fairly sceptical, “we’ll just wait and see” attitude. Once I arrived, I waited a good 20 minutes near the baggage carousel for a bag that wasn’t even in the state any more. I had a chat with a rude arse Delta clerk (“of course your bag isn’t here, your ticket clearly says Billings” – umm fuck you too). My bag, it seemed, had gone AWOL and he couldn’t tell me where it was. You’d think in these Amber Alert times we live in, keeping track of someone’s luggage would be a fairly standard procedure. No. – Anyways, I’ve whinged enough about my bag going missing. Thankfully the wonderful Erin was there to pick me up and take me away before I slipped into the unpleasant, pissed off customer from hell. What this does result in is two days in Montana and only what I had on for clothes, with nothing to keep me warm or dry while walking around outside. Cue the mystery, “unisex” vest (with a badge shaped like pickle pinned to it), which had magically materialised in Erin and Mandy’s flat 6 months previous. When I put it on, I couldn’t help imagining a diner owner asking me why I was wearing a life preserver and if I had jumped ship recently. Sure, from the outside, the vest appeared like any other. But I knew that the tag resting against the back of my neck had a “W” printed on it.

Mandy, Erin’s flatmate gave me the 20c tour, meeting up with Erin in the downtown area. We kidnapped Lorie from her work and took her to the local for a couple of beers, making plans for the evening. After I cooked up a nachos storm in their kitchen, a group of us went to the pub we frequented earlier and had a few of their “Long Island Ice Teas”, which tasted nothing like, nor provided the anticipated kick, but weren't wholly unpleasant and were consumed with guster.

The following day, Erin and I headed to Yellowstone National Park. We got there a little after 1pm, and found the roads down to Old Faithful and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone had just opened for the first time this year. Walking around the hot springs, Erin was able to use her primary school teaching prowess to give me an educational tour of the park. I now know that these things are called travertines, that most of the park is sitting on top of a super volcano (which if it erupted, would take a fair chunk of the US with it), and that most of the park is mostly in Wyoming and Idaho, with only a little bit of it in Montana. Mammoth Springs are really impressive, with the back of it looking like the Moon and the front like Mars.

We then headed to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, where a diminutive, but still rather impressive, natural recreation of the Grand Canyon has been dug out by the Yellowstone river. As we walked up to the edge, it started to snow, just like my time at the real Grand Canyon. Looking down into the canyon and over at the massive waterfall (which a skin of frozen water covers during the winter months), the view would be welcome in any Lord of the Rings movie. After that we headed to the Paint Pots, a collection of multicoloured hot springs dotted around an small hillside. The “Pots” have really vivid colours, which a dramatically contrasted against the drab, grey surrounding. A little way up the hillside, a bunch of hot mud pits bubble away like saucepans full of porridge. I gt adventurous and threw a chunk of solidified mud into the eye of one of the bubbling bits, only to have it thrown back at me in the form of hot mud. And thanks to it being off-season, we only saw about a dozen people the whole time we were there. We skipped a few things to catch Old Faithful before it got dark, and found a small group of people huddling around one another to keep warm. According to them, the last time it went off was about an hour prior to us arriving and it was due to go off any minute. There were a few fizzes and farts and for about 15 minutes, Erin, myself and the other people standing around watching it were convinced that that was all we were going to get. As we walked around to get a different view, we passed a couple (who had been there for over an hour in the snow and cold), who were about to give up and walk back to their car. As they did, the show started and sure enough Old Faithful remained true to form and spewed steam and boiling hot water about 20 metres into the air. Spectacular stuff. I would like to come back someday and explore the geyser field which dots the surrounds of Old Faithful, but I’m guessing that’s off limits.

The next day, I helped Erin move house with her mum, uncle and aunt. Really friendly people with refreshing views from a Montanan perspective. Later that night, drinking and pool were all the go with Erin and her mates. We all had a good laugh when I met Jess, the owner of the vest. The next day, we ventured out to Virginia and Nevada City, two tiny ghost towns which played a big role in the gold rush and wild west era of the US. Again, being before Memorial Day, the place was totally empty, thus adding to the ghost town feeling. A dog followed us around for the better part of the day, whose insatiable appetite for stick fetching and rabbit chasing led to some close encounters with death.

Thanks to the Montana Massive - Erin, Charlie, Lorie and all their friends – for showing me a great time in their beautiful little city of Bozeman for the last few days.

Now, after 10 hours of planes, trains and automobiles, I'm in Gotham.

delayed. cancelled. late. diverted. lost.

2007-04-20T17:16:00.000+02:00

My flight from Oakland (San Francisco's auxiliary airport) was initially delayed, and then cancelled due to faulty alarms. Most of the terminal, including myself, was made to walk out past security, but when the fraud was discovered, I had to go back trough security. By the time I got back to my gate, the flight had been cancelled and I was put onto later flight to Salt Lake City, but missed the connecting flight to Billings by 5 minutes. I was really nice and friendly about the kaffufle, and managed to wangle a flight directly to Bozeman and a free night's accommodation at a nearby hotel. For most of the night, it snowed pretty hard. However, the hotel's idea of "luck" was making it onto the 8am shuttle bus to the airport, their idea of chicken cesar salad involves grinding Paul Newman's Italian dressing in a mortar and pestle until it turns white and their idea of breakfast is like finding the theoretical value of the "x" in an impossibly impossible algebra equation. I got on my flight to Bozeman, and the view of Salt Lake City looked gorgeous, but my luggage somehow made its way to Idaho and took until today to arrive. This was my first experience with internal flight in the States. I don't need a crystal ball or naked pagan dances around a fire to see that there will be a stern letter and travel vouchers in my future.

Now I'm in Montana - Big Sky Country

Half dome toupee

2007-04-19T19:03:00.000+02:00

Aside from the gun craziness here in the US, my last few days in California were great. Last weekend, I helped out with the construction of a band stand (made out of car bonnets, recycled wood and computer motherboards), with the girl I was staying with and a few of her friends. A project involving a bunch of Burning Man veterans, the bandstand will be about ten metres high and about 18 metres wide and will be set up in a park here in San Fran sometime in July. I was chuffed that my idea to sort the motherboards out in order of colour and then nailed up in a gradient of light to dark was taken on. Looking at the plans and seeing what we had put together on the first day of construction, this thing will look amazing. There was a brief moment of KBE where I was chatting with the guys about going hiking on the weekend with some random San Franciscan. When I mentioned I was going with this guy called Tim who works with a local theatre company, they all said they knew him and that I was going to have an interesting time hiking with him. As it turned out, the hiking guy's name wasn't Tim, and he worked with a totally different theatre company and wasn't the homicidal axe murderer that I was warned about.

Sunday brought another day of suffering from the inordinate amount of wine consumed on Thursday night. I should have either vomited or gone hair of the dog to sort it out earlier. I spent the morning hanging out with Amy until she went to help a friend dig a garden with her friend in Oakland. Earlier in the week, when I thought I had been caught short with accommodation, I emailed a few people asking about staying with them. One of the answers I got was similar to one I got while I was in Austria. Sure you can stay with me, but you have to do it while I do this cool amazing thing. I'm going to Yosemite. Hadn't seen too much of the national parks here in California, so I jumped at the offer. Around 4pm, I walked the 3 miles over to where we had organised to meet up and there I found three guys packing camping stuff into a car. Two Danish guys who had been travelling with each other for a few months and our guide, Ted (Tim.. Ted.. I was close). On the drive up, the city thinned out like my granddad's hair until eventually we were in Red Barn, Americana farm land. We stopped for food and petrol and were greeted with a waft of cow shit. We're not in San Francisco any more Toto.

We get to the park and drive trough the unmanned entrance. While Ted has a yearly national pass, it appears that if one arrives after 6pm and then leaves the following day after 6pm, one can avoid paying the $20 required for entry. Dodgy. There are signs everywhere telling visitors to not leave food or drink in their cars, as bears will either sniff it out or spot it through the windows and then proceed to peel your car door open as if it was a sardine can. We sorted out our stuff, enjoyed an overpriced beer at the local and bunked in for the night. An early morning followed, and we made our way to Half Dome, via a collection of fairly grouse waterfalls. The Danish boys took turns in singing Danish pop songs, Monty Python anthems and defending their language.

When we got to about 2 kms from the base of Half Dome, we turned back as one of the Danish blokes has a blood sugar issue and hadn't brought enough sweet stuff with him. That and the weather looked as if it was blowing in. The park is a beautiful place with plenty of random trails, that after the magic mile mark, the amount of not so keen hikers thins out. Later that night, I met some of the guys who worked in the camp. They were fairly entertaining and told me about the joys of seasonal work in the park and the economic advantages of drinking booze in the cheap seats ("Out here, beers cost $1. In there with the tourists, they cost $6). Initially when I approached the group of friends, I found one of the guys was rather against chatting with a tourist. But he turned out to be one of the more entertaining people to speak with, having that quick, slightly competitive streak in his tone that most young American guys carry. It's weird speaking with Americans in their home country. Having only been exposed in any great quantity to their accent via the TV, sometimes it can be a little surreal interacting with the American accent, something that up until recently I only found in fiction.

After that I went into the main area (the $6 beer place), and saw the Virginia Tech shootings unfolding on the TV in a confusion of phone videos and second hand reports. On the table next to me, an Australian family expressed their dismay at the most recent of school shootings here in the States. We agreed Australia, while being close to the US in many regards, had some fantastically wonderful distinctions. They were here on a two-week family holiday and they had just arrived in the park for a couple of days of hiking and sightseeing. I sat down and chatted about the last year with them. What's been going on in Australia, what I've been doing, the motivation for the trip, how they were taking in their family holiday and eventually collectively fending off the advances of one of the drunken, non-cheap seat workers on their 14yo daughter.

On the second day, the Danish guys and I walked up to the Mariposa Sequoia Grove for some big tree touristing. This time, Ted took a back seat to the adventure and let us "youngins" explore the woods by ourselves. The sequoia trees are amazing to see up close, with their soft bark, massive circumferences and their unexpected low height. Walking through the handful of trees left in the grove, you get the idea that once upon a time, there were hundreds of these guys huddled together like an Ent meeting.

Our trip back was fairly uneventful, with a visit to In-N-Outs coming as a little bit of an anti-climax. The boys dropped me off at the Bart station and I trained it back into central San Francisco, back to Amy's place. In the morning we walked down the street for a coffee - good coffee - and said goodbye. I spent some of the day sorting out some future travels and saying my goodbyes to the city. San Francisco has been my highlight as far as culture, architecture and community attitude goes. There's a bit of snootiness and snobbery there, but I guess if you want to be like a European city, you need to behave like one.

We the people...

2007-04-18T23:25:00.001+02:00

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The recent shootings here in the US has kick started the guns debate.

Again.

I was reminded of a chat I had with an Arizonian pawn shop owner when he was showing me a Magnum 44 handgun he had behind the counter. I said to him "back at home, we don't have crazy big guns like this.. ", he said to me "yeah. your government's really screwed your country up by taking away your rights". Ok then.. Whatever you say crazy man with big gun. To their credit, the Howard government, as much as they are a pack of wankers, did the right thing with tightening the gun laws in Australia after Port Arthur. But people shouldn't need to be shot dead to inspire leaders to act in this way. Nor will the 1996 changes to Australian gun laws mean that there will never be another shooting in Australia.

I see gun laws like I see bike locks. If someone really wants to steal my bike; they will, no matter how big the lock holding it to a Stobey pole is. But simply putting the flimsiest of locks on it acts as a deterrent to every Tom, Dick and Dirty Harry that thinks "I think I might bugger off with this untethered ride". That said, I still think the person who pinched my bike from uni three years ago should be shot, but this is where the analogy gets itself lost in the woods, only to emerge 3 years later, shooting classmates and postal workers.

So what does America do? Would a government which led the charge in disarming its citizens be taken down just as the constitution predicts? What about the media's role in this? Replaying the footage over and over (ala 9/11), could inspire copycats. Sure, guns act as a great plot device, dramatic focus and fancy looking prop in the movies, but movies aren't real. In reality when you fire a gun at someone, they often die. I love action movies. They are so distanced from reality and based in a world of adrenaline fuelled fantasy that the violence experienced vicariously through them is a pornography of sorts. So ridiculous that it can't be real. Sure, everyone has sex, but when does it occur with minimal, pool cleaning related dialogue, with a group of plastic breasted lesbians, living in a frat house all wearing high heels and bikinis? I should be back in LA pitching that idea to someone.

Next time you go to the movies or video shop, take a look at the posters promoting the latest action, adventure movie. You'll probably find some handsome/muscle-clad guy with a panting beauty hanging off of him, while he's pointing a gun somewhere out of the frame. Just think. That gun is pointed at someone with the intention to kill them. Lucky it's all make-believe. I remember the big deal made about cigarettes appearing in movies, leading kids to believe that it was cool to smoke and all that. Have you watched many Australian movies from the past few years? The Proposition. Two Hands. Chopper. All fairly violent, gun happy movies - but still Australia has low gun related death rate.

Hey America. Less guns = less people being shot.

By the way, the American Constitution shares centre stage with the Bible for contradicting itself and being interpreted in many different ways here in the States. All I want to know is, what happened to the "well regulated" bit of the second amendment?

cable car

2007-04-15T01:04:00.001+02:00

A couple of nights ago I checked out San Francisco's version of free cinema in the park. The movie was Breaking Away, the 1979 flick with plenty of bike riding sub-plot and a message about small university towns in the US, where the local kids fight with the rich out of towners who come to study there. Even at 25, Dennis Quaid is still the same actor he is now, albeit all buff and young looking. Run by a group of friends, the night is as much about bringing the community together as it is about watching movies. It reminded me of the movie nights we would hold back at home, across the road from MacKinnon Parade during summer. Only this one in SF is better organised, has a proper screen (no enormous bed sheet hanging over a cricket screen here folks), way more people and even a guy selling popcorn. Held in Dolores Park, a few blocks away from Mission street (think Smith street in Melbourne, but with more bars and music venues), the guys put on a movie on every second Thursday during the warmer months. This was the first, slightly chilly night for the season. Before the movie starts, a small band performs for the crowd, a couple of trailers usually run before the movie and then the crowd votes on the next movie to play. The options were Chocolat and the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Too many links between Chocolate and Johnny Depp for my liking) – Willy Wonker won the vote by a clear majority.

A British guy sat down on the grass next to me and we started chatting. After a couple of minutes of speaking, the guy in front of us turns around and say: "dude.. what are you doing in San Francisco?" Turns out that they knew each other in London through a mutual friend, but had lost contact since. Somehow, randomly they sat next to each other 9,000 km away 2 years later. The world isn't just small for me. As I was buying popcorn, I got chatting with one of the dudes that ran the night. After expressing my respect for the event and my envy of their operation, I handed him my email address. To this he replied: "Is that a George Lazenby reference?" Being one of the few people to get the reference, while I've been travelling, my admiration for this guy grew. He then asked "what was it that George Lazenby's Bond do that none of the others did?" I reply, "he got married". A respectful punching of each other's fists followed. We had bonded.

I drank too much wine and not enough water and spent the next day wandering around hungover as shit. Thankfully, a friend Roxanna’s (my CS host), gave me a guided tour of the suburbs around central San Francisco. We checked out a few cafes, sat in Dolores park in the sun, ate rice pudding and I was even treated to a free manicure. Later I went back to the apartment packed up my stuff and said my goodbyes to Roxanna. She’s been a cool host and showed me plenty of her version of San Francisco. One of the cool things about Roxanna’s place was I could use the cable cars as a legitimate form of public transport rather than just a hokey touristy thing to do.

Now I’m staying Lower Haight with a chick who works as an architect with a fairly strong sense of being socially responsible. She has a cool Australian mate who works for a small IT firm here in SF and they're both keen bike riders. Last night we grabbed Indian food and checked out the lobby of the SF Hyatt, a really impressive structure to look at, and I was reassured that architecturally, even though the designer is a complete arrogant wanker to meet, his designs are usually quite giving to those who use his structures. Architecturally speaking that is. It was an impressive place to see and you don't need a architecture degree to appreciate it and is worth a look. I also gained a new appreciation for the discrete drainage system used in Mission Square. Architecturally speaking, that is.

I still really need to buy some new shoes. I really don’t want to let go of the Keens I’ve been wearing for the last year. All the separate parts are still in relatively good shape, but it’s just the seams and joints have started coming apart and the soles are wearing away in typical pigeon toe fashion. This combination of footwear malfunctions collaborated in the dampening of my socks this rainy morning, at the Farmers Markets. Damn good coffee though. Anyway, I just can’t bring myself to part with them using the excuse in my head that no matter what shoes I look at and find interesting, if I don’t find exactly the same pair of Keens, I’m not shelling out for another pair of shoes. Thankfully the day has cleared up and a walk to the park is in order. A detour to the kite store in China Town beforehand may provide entertainment for the afternoon.

Real tales of San Francisco

2007-04-11T23:49:00.001+02:00

I'm totally crushing on this city. Everyone is super friendly and chilled out. There's plenty of things to see and do. The art/music/interesting stuff scene is alive and well. And the place itself is really pretty. Is it legal to marry a city? I now pronounce you man and municipality and all that guff.. I will first need to divorce the In-N-Out burger I married last week, but maybe we can come to an arrangement involving some really bizarre love triangle. I've spent the last few days riding around getting a feel for the city's layout and working the last few months of not having regular access to a bike out of my system. These hills are great. They're steep enough to be a challenge, but have little flat bits breaking it up along the way that even the worst hills don't have the hellish feeling of hell rides from hell. And when you get to the top, there's a new view and a downward slope to shake your hand on a job well done. I was chatting to an Irish bloke the other day who was telling me that on one of his first nights in the city, he and his girlfriend offered a taxi driver $50 to drive at great speed over a couple of them. Being 2 in the morning, the taxi driver took the challenge and fanged his cab over a couple of hills, getting enough air each time that even Pedro and Napoleon would be proud. He said that they were so buzzed by the experience, they gave the guy $100. If you want to see an entertaining SF car chase involving such jumps, check out the 1988 Dirty Harry movie Dead Pool. The remote control car is my hero, even if it does take out Callahan's partner with a fiery death.

Yesterday, I walked into a print shop to get more cards printed up. Sitting at the computer, I start chatting to the girl who works there. After I say I'm from Australia and have been travelling for about a year she says: "Do you have a blog? The kevin bacon something? I randomly found it a couple of weeks ago while on the net". Small world. After some food, I checked out Golden Gate Park, San Francisco's version of a big city park. It's a pretty place, especially since the weather here is so beautiful. I saw my first gopher, a couple of dogs play fighting and met a nature photographer who's lenses were bigger than my legs. I rode the length of the park all the way to the coast and sat down for a bit, staring out across the peppered sand and choppy waves thinking about the beach I sat on 8,500km away in Hamamatsu, Japan in 2005. So much has happened since then. Some of the more hokey views of San Francisco are visible from around this area, with a nice view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the surrounding headland framed by sloping streets and sun-faded wooden Victorian town houses. I took some photos, but they really don't do it justice, so you're just going to have to see it for yourself. I can recommend the corner of 43rd and Fulton for the full effect.

While riding around yesterday I listened to KUSF, San Francisco's University radio station. Plenty of random American music I would never have had heard if I had chosen an iPod for my music playing experience. Sure, they're pretty, have a lot of space and there are entire shops devoted to accessories for them, but there's no radio on it. What's the go there Apple? From what I've heard, Californian radio is pretty decent. I figured you guys would have switched onto this. Anyway.. The great thing about listening to local radio stations is that occasionally they tell you what bands are playing in the area. I heard the magic words "Lightning Bolt" and "Tonight" mentioned in the same sentence, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and made me return to the apartment likity split. Back in 2003, I bought a bunch of DVDs off the net with random clips recorded from TV and submitted from backyard doco makers. One of the clips on there was edited highlights from a 2002 documentary following Lightning Bolt on tour. There was about 5 minutes of frantic, ear blistering, highly energetic live performance shown, and ever since I've wanted more. Jon Dale hooked me up with a copy of the full doco in 2004, but there was one vital piece missing to my own personal Lightning Bolt experience: Seeing them live. Last night I got the chance.

I caught the bus down to the Mission (an area in SF with plenty of great pubs and live music venues), and found the place (12 Galaxies) where they were performing. A little sign on the door politely told the large, disappointed looking cue that the performance was sold out. Crap. I asked a couple of people of if they had spare tickets, eventually finding this one guy who said "how much do you want to see them?". I pointed out the loaded nature of his question and we chatted for a while about the band. A lady asked us for money and showed us a photo of her son Diante, which pushed some valuable names out of my head. He handed over the free ticket details and I was in, with the promise of a beer for him after the show. The night was being held by Club Donuts, a group of girls who organise, manage, DJ, VJ and place doughnuts on tables throughout the night. And they made a sweet job of it too. The support acts were well matched to the headliner, with the in-between bits filled in nicely and the visuals (provided by a Mac running Final Cut connected to 3 projectors), were simple but effective. They also run a pirate radio station on 93.7fm, 3D Radio's frequency.

Lightning Bolt were amazing.

After the show, I caught up with the guy who had helped me out with the ticket. Turns out he's known one of the guys from the band for ages and flatted with one of the bar staff a couple of years ago. Once I had finished bouncing between conversations for an hour, I walked out and my bus was right there waiting for me. Awesome.

Leaving Los Angeles

2007-04-09T21:15:00.001+02:00

Before I start gushing about how much I love San Francisco, a few words need to be said about my last few days in LA and the trip up here.

I spent one day walking around Santa Monica and then down to Venice Beach. Being a weekday, I missed out on seeing the freak show that everyone was talking about, but I think I saw the guy from the Blublockers Ad. I found a 1963 Ford bus, with some guy living in it. He said he had been parked there on an off for the past 12 years, occasionally travelling around to do public access television appearances, update his website and get parts for his bus. He said his name was Happy and was working away on his laptop, trawling craigslist for some new tyres for his bus. He told me that the local government had redeveloped the beach around him 3 times, with his bus being factored into the changes. Now that the local government was stacked with assholes, he had to start paying money to be there. The weather was overcast (read: smoggy), and there was a bit of a chill blowing off the ocean so the crowds were thin and the homeless people outnumbered the tourists. It still gets to me that one of the richest countries in the world can have such a turn a blind eye attitude to homelessness. It was one of the thing I saw in London that disturbed me, next to paying $9 AUD for a pint of beer.

That night, a group of us went out to sushi. We were trying to work out if the couple on the table across from us was on a date or just mates. The low cut top on the girl and the nervous fidgeting of the guy firmed up our theory. They ordered an unbelievable amount of food, and we flirted with the idea of asking them for the leftovers. Then Will gave us a lift back to the flat in his Prius. The little screen saying how much energy was coming from what motor and how many miles per gallon the car was getting was as enthralling as a cliff-hanger Lost episode. And when we were standing still, the car is so silent and feels like it's off. I don't think I could actually own one without crashing it or constantly thinking the car had stalled. Driving in that slice of the future made me think about the things humanity will be giving up over the next 50 years. It was a bit like an electric kettle, you know the one that turns itself off when it's done, rather than whisltling to let you know when you need to take it off the stove. Sure, our planet will be cleaner and human kind wont have to go searching other planets to fuck up for a few more centuries, but nothing beats the growl and whine of a twin turbo flat six Porsche engine sitting 2 feet behind you.

The next day, Fabian (the German), and I went looking around Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive. Having someone else to bounce ideas off helped me come to the conclusion that unless you're really a part of it, LA is a dive. The Walk of Fame reminded me of my granddad's scalp, having a clump of healthy, well know celebs around the centre (some double parked with one another). But once you walked away from the neon and gift shops towards the boarded up restaurants and crack dens, the "stars" became these no name, no frills people we had never heard of. Fabian was really happy to see David Hasselhoff's star and posed accordingly. For a laugh, we went into the Scientology building for a free stress test. Man those guys are funny. We both took turns on the E-Meter. I watched Fabian get quizzed for 10 minutes or so about what stresses him out in life and then see the magic powers of Scientology being dangled in front of him as the solution to all his woes. When asked to provide a happy and a sad feeling, Fabian said Icecream and Murder. All class from the German. When it came my turn, I grabbed hold of their modified multimeter and took the test. She asked me questions about all the bad things in my life, adjusting the E-meter as she went to factor in the minute muscle tensing the continuity tester picks up on. To fuck with it, I applied pressure on the paddles when talking about good stuff (ice cream), and then relaxed when I spoke about bad stuff (murder), providing contradicting readings to the subject matter. The technique she was using on me felt as if she was trying to back me into a corner of negativity, with Scientology as being the only out. It reminded me of the speech a Herblife friend gave to me once. They're not my friend any more. For the rest of the auditing process, I just relaxed my arms and hands so the metre didn't move at all, answering all of her questions as honestly as possible. Serious brainwashing shit for the unsuspecting and vulnerable. I asked her why negativity and fear was being used to recruit me into their church. She didn't have an answer for that one. I didn't buy their book.

We left, crossed the road and entered an army surplus store. We started chatting with the young guy behind the counter. He said he was from Texas and that when he went to an NRA training meet up, he was really disappointed with their organisational skills and the day of shooting didn't match his expectations. He said that there was no point with joining the NRA, as who wants to have a legally acquired gun when shooting someone? He said if we wanted to get a gun today without all the hassle of cooling off periods and IDs, we should just walk a few blocks east and buy one from the Chinese. The next store we visited was a music shop full of old synths. I chatted with the guy about his store, Stevie Wonder's warehouse of equipment and the pseudo-mythical Yamaha GX-1. Fabian and I then made our way to the Farmers Market and the Grove. The Farmers Market food area was pretty cool, with an entire stall devoted to hot sauces (keep on eye on the letter box Luke). The Grove was just another soulless mall full of credit card fuelled obsessive compulsion stores. There was a big clothing store hosted by semi naked models, and after walking around looking at jeans that cost the GDP of a handful of Pacific islands, we leave. As we are walking away from the area, we run into two people wearing price tag shaped name badges. This could only mean one thing: The Price is Right. Sure enough, around the corner we find the CBS studios where the show is filmed. I get excited about being on a game show and sell the idea to the German. We make our way over to find out about how to get tickets. We have missed out on getting into The Price is Heiß (the German name for the show), but there's a chance we can squeeze into the Late Late show. Nope. No tickets. I convince Fabian that he should sign up for the next day's taping of The Price is Right. I wonder what the deal is if you take home the showcase while you're travelling?

A week or so ago I had organised a ride from LA to SF through Craigslist.org - I was contacted by a few people, but settled on going up with Raymond, the first person to respond with an offer. I'm glad I did, because he was one of the coolest people I've met while travelling. In his 50s, he is now retired living on his pension, helping as many people he can with his time and money. Great guy. If you are ever in need of a ride between LA and San Francisco, I can thoroughly recommend tagging along with Raymond as he does the trip every couple of weeks. Funny part is, the couchsurfers who had stayed with the people I stayed with a couple of weeks ago also travelled with Raymond.

The place I'm staying in is fairly central to everything here in SF. A block or so away is the bit in the Bullitt car chase where the Mustang appears in the rear-view of the bad guy's Charger. Roxanna, the girl I'm staying with, grew up here and knows the city backwards. The night arrived, we went to a friend of hers birthday get together and then on Saturday another friend's going away party. Yesterday, I borrowed her bike and rode over the Golden Gate Bridge and up into the nearby hills. I met a guy from Melbourne and ended up hanging out with him for most of the day. I caught the tail end of the BYOBW (Bring Your Own Big Wheel), race where once a year on Easter Sunday, adults ride kids bikes down Lombard Street.

Today, I'm doing what I did in Prague paying homage to the super V8 styling of cop movies from the 60s, 70s and 80. Man. I'm on Dirty Harry's turf.. This is fucking cool. The one thing that is flipping me out about being in the States, is that most of the places I'm visiting I already kind of know through film and TV. San Diego = Top Gun; Las Vegas = Fear and Loathing, LA = Pulp Fiction, Terminator. Now that I'm here in San Fran, where many of the late night cop movies I watched on Channel 7 as a kid were filmed, I'm a little spun out by the living movie set around me. I'm in a place where so much of the mythology of my youth is set and it's a real mind spinner. A living fiction. I think part of my time here has to be spent chasing bad dudes across roof tops, hanging out with pimps and jumping cars over the ridiculous hills.

San Francisco

2007-04-08T06:52:00.001+02:00

I love this place.

does hope come in metric too?

2007-04-06T10:16:00.001+02:00

Andy and Laurie decided to spend a couple of extra days in Hawaii leaving me to my own devices for another couple of days. Their toilet didn't work too well and I had to perform some fairly inventive plumbing techniques to get it kind of working again. I hung out with the next door neighbours on a couple afternoons. They were all moving out of their sweet two storey sharehouse in the hills of Del Mar. Sighting the metastasizing gentrification of Southern California as the motivation behind their landlord giving them the flick, the guys suspect their cool old beach house to be replaced by several tiny beach apartments within 5 years.

I rode around San Diego for the last couple of days I was there, spending time in Balboa Park, Downtown and around Del Mar. There's a cool old horse racecourse over the other side of the hill from A&L's place. As the Rat Pack used to go there to bet on the nags and chat up the ladies, I thought it would make for a cool place to photograph. What I found was an Auto Customs show , celebrating all things Chrome plated, shiny and American. So many beautiful old cars, but catching bits of people's conversations here and there, the general consensus between all the car owners was that it was better in the old days.

I got a lift up to Irvine with Laurie and then caught the train up to Los Angeles. I've been in LA for the last 3 days staying with and meeting a bunch of cool peeps. Bit of a shitty place to visit if you don't have a car and have to rely on their public transport system. Although their subway is pretty flash, the bus system is sketchy, with the majority of drivers I had the pleasure to deal with being a bunch of rude so and so. Have you seen that Simpsons episode where the family go to Itchy and Scratchy land, homer goes up to the ticket booth and the attendant suggests that he purchase Itchy and Scratchy money (Like real money, just more fun), only to find he can't use it anywhere in the park? I just experienced a similar doh when it came to the Metro tokens I was sold at Union station when I first arrived. Sure the maths worked out really well, getting you $16 of travel for $11, but when it came to actually using these tokens on the subway, the machines weren't designed to take them and there are no conductors to help you. Only guards with night sticks and glocks to remind you that you have the right to remain silent. I was instructed to find a bus, flag it down then buy a metro ticket from them. The bus driver eventually handed over what I wanted with a big "you are a massive fuckwit wasting my precious bus driving time" sigh and groan.

Eventually I found it to Hollywood and subtly made my way around with full pack for a couple of hours, checking out the stars on the footpath (Walk of Fame). I addressed all the impersonators by assumed character name, although I think the Elvira was the real deal I used to have this recurring dream in my early teens, where no mater what the context or subject matter the dream contained, somewhere a bottle of cheese whizz would appear, giving me a "yep.. I'm really in a America" feeling all over. Now that I'm here, I've not seen any.

Do not underestimate the Grand Canyon

2007-04-02T22:52:00.001+02:00

The Grand Canyon is really impressive. There are signs posted around the rim trail warning people not to 'underestimate the Grand Canyon'. They're not joking. Like with any impressive big natural thing in the world - photos just don't do them justice.

On my first day there, I drove into the park and paid the $25 entrance fee. Ouch. This did give me 7 days of access to the park, so I figured I'd stay there for a little longer and skip on hiking in Flagstaff. It was early, and I was keen to hike down to the bottom and check out the Colorado river. San Diego Andy had said I could reach the bottom and then hike back up easily in a day, provided I left early enough. It was 9:30 and I figured I could make it. I parked the car and rode up to the Hermit Trail, which took a little longer than expected, thanks to all the stopping and looking I did on the way. I got to a nearby hut, bought a coffee and considered my options. There were clouds off in the distance, but they didn't look like a threat to the day's plans. It was now 10:20, and my time was looking a little tighter. As I made my way to the rim, the wind began to pick up and there was a fresh chill in the air that was absent in the morning. The sun was still out and I figured it was still cool and I hiked down.

Along the way, I met several people coming the other way with full packs, returning from their adventure in the wilderness. I asked about how to organise the licence to camp in the Canyon. Most of them told me that they had booked in December and that the likelihood of getting a pass for today/tomorrow would be next to none. Bummer. I ran into a couple of families, where the dad was clearly hell bent on providing the best damn holiday he could for the rest of the family. The rest of the family looked tired and not nearly as enthusiastic their fearless leader hiking up ahead. They reminded me a lot of the Griswold's taking their trip to Wally World, or driving around around London. Look kids: Big Ben, Parliament.

I spent a couple of hours getting down to a spot called Santa Maria hut, about a third of the way down. The day was getting on, and the dark clouds I had seen earlier had stealthily crept their way across the sky and were looking a lot more ominous and foreboding. I decided to avoid getting drenched and check out the rest of the Rim Trail instead, then try my luck at reaching the river the following day. As I walked up, I bumped into a few people coming the other way. I got chatting to one of them, and he said he had friends in Adelaide. Turns out this guy had gone to university with Deane Hutton, one half of The Curiosity Show. Small world. I met a few guys down from LA and a couple of girls from Spain. There was this young guy walking in with full pack, obliviously planning to spend the night camping at the bottom. He was from Oregon and had been looking forward to doing this trip for a while. When I got back to the top, the fresh wind from earlier in the day had picked up and become much more icy. The clouds were almost directly above me, the sun was covered over and things looked as if nastiness was on its way.

I get my bike and start riding back to the car, about 2kms away. On the way back I stop off at the lookouts I had missed on the way up and stop to take photos. I get chatting to this woman next to me and it turns out she is the mum of the young guy from Oregon I had passed on the way back out of the Canyon. Again, small world. While we're chatting, it starts to snow. Arizona? Snow? Huh? As we're both going in the same direction (me on my bike and her in her car), we stop at the same lookouts on the way. After about half an hour of stopping at the same places, the low cloud covers over the view and it begins to snow harder. She offers me a lift and we go back to the cafe to chat about all sorts of things. It was really interesting hearing about her (Kathy?) life, spending time in the meditation sanctuary during the 80s and all that stuff. Regardless of whether I totally agree with someone's world view, I'm always keen to listen to their opinions and get a different perspective on life. There's a little ad stuck to the back of a nearby chair featuring a photo of this buff looking mountaineering type, standing all Free and Brave, with the line "We rescue around 1,000 per year from the Grand Canyon. Most of them look like just like him". I reconsider my trip into the now snowy Canyon and opt for the much safer, non-freeze to death option of sight seeing in the park instead. We finish chatting around 5pm and go our separate ways.

I returned to the car to find it all iced up. I clean off the windshield, drive off and try and catch the sunset, but it's obscured by the snow storm. I leave the park and find some food at a town just out of the park. Curious to see that most of the little diners I visited on the road carried a fairly decent, albeit limited vegetarian option on their menus. I found my camp site, and by this stage it was really cold, so I decide to sleep in the car. I get up really early to catch the sunrise, but that too is covered in cloud. There was a cool fog drifting through the huge cracks of the Canyon, and from where I was standing it looked like milk had been spilled on a cracked wooden floor, slowly bleeding into the gaps. After the calmness of dawn, the weather closes in again and I decided not to try and camp at the bottom of the Canyon. I get in the car and start the drive back to California.

lost highway

2007-03-31T19:40:00.001+02:00

While driving around the southwestern desert bits of America, I can't help but miss music. Andy and Laurie's Volvo doesn't have a stereo and my only company has been the sound of the engine, the rush of the wind and the occasional junk yard attendee while hunting for a replacement. I'm amazed at the amount of analysis and introspection that can go on when you're driving in silence for 6 hours straight. Why did I do that stupid thing when I was 17? Man, I could have saved so much money if I had only stayed in Australia. Why does that girl still get to me? Who was that guy in that movie.. the one with the mouth and the teeth? Did I just run over a rabbit?

An internal conversation forms to pass away the time. You begin deflecting the maddening tedium of desert driving by talking to yourself in your head, with occasional vocalized outbursts. I remember when a friend of mine who did a solo bike ride from Adelaide to Darwin returned home, he would finish his sentence with a self-confirming grunt for about a month afterwards. Now here I am, singing to a non-existent radio as I drive 70 miles an hour down some back road, occasionally laughing at a Simpsons episode I saw 6 years ago and swearing at the night. But it is this same internal conversation that brings on its own particular brand of madness. Over analysis, self-criticism, paranoia and anxiety can easily replace the laughing and singing. David Lynch signs the lease to your mind, rips the lino in the kitchen while shifting the fridge around and makes himself at home on your couch. Scenarios which would totally be out of order in reality, become as real as the wheel in your hand and the world turns into your greatest enemy. Thankfully, the American desert isn't as stupidly big and uneventful as the Australian desert. I've listened to enough music, watched enough TV and can reminisce over enough interesting situations to keep me occupied. And I really did hit a rabbit.

Over the past year, I've acquired and swapped music with those I meet on the road. In London, I met this guy from Perth who hooked me up with a bunch of good music, including some random Australian stuff, which has been fun to dole out to people along the way. Unfortunately, at a party in Mexico City where my laptop was plugged into the stereo, Kevin Bloody Wilson's "You Orta See Me When I'm Pissed" started to play, and I had to explain the dark side of Australian culture to the Mexican party goers. I've also been introduced to the world of playlist torrents, where 100 or so songs have been put together and people then offer them up for illegal download. In no way does this help the artists you're listening to, but it does give you a broad spectrum of music to listen to, when things like JJJ, Three D and Triple R aren't available or have irritating high rotation.

A few listening suggestions:

Xiu Xiu, The Greats, The Dears (still), Band of Horses, The Knife, Kevin bloody Wilson.

This is the first time in a while I've know where I'm going to be 3 months in advance - I'm about 5 Big Kevs excited, but you guys will have to wait.

Vegas Baby, Vegas

2007-03-28T11:47:00.000+02:00

There is really no easy way to describe the time I had in Vegas. Fucking fantastic is a good start, but that might understate things a little.

First off, Andy and Cindy were my hosts. Super laid back with only the decision of what tropical country they'll live in next year to worry about. Their apartment is on the 21st floor of this brand new hotel and condo complex, just behind the MGM grand. HDTVs, Egyptian cotton sheets, wifi, whirlpool bath, access to gym, and massive pool, etc. In a word: Plush.

On my last day in town, we arranged to meet up with some friends of theirs from Austin at Denny's to grab a bite to eat and then go hiking somewhere out of town afterwards. As we pulled into the carpark of Denny's, a reality stage show begun to unfolded in front of us. An old bloke, - who had on the worst (maybe the best, depending on your world view), wig ever constructed. The subtle Elvis stylings were greatly enhanced by bits of natural hair hanging out the side and the back - was having some car trouble. He was trying to jump start his circa 1989 V8 something with some other guy's circa 2007 4 cylinder something. As we all hopped out of the car, the old guy and his ever so eager assistant (who was covered head to foot in grease and seemed to have 3 different nervous tics fighting it out, occasionally colliding with each other causing for a big twitch and then a funny look at onlookers), were trying to clean the crap off of a pair on ancient jumper cables. Andy offered his brand new set, dug about tin the back of his car and presented it to them. We then left them to their devices, entered Denny's and put our name down for a table for 5. Seeing that we had a 20 minute wait ahead, we went back outside and waited for the Austin girls to show up, watching the drama of the car continue. By this stage, the original guy who had offered his car had given up and left. Andy and I, being the nosy types we are, added our two cents to the equation: "oh, so last night you were driving, you turned your headlights on and then 10 minutes later you engine died? Well that sounds like your alternator". The tic guy used us to confirm his earlier suspicions and looked really pleased about having some allies on this one. "as I was sayin' (tic), the alternator". He asked why I talked funny. I said I was from Australia. He then started talking about Australian women and about his aim to go there and marry one. By this stage, I had lost interest in fixing the car, opting rather to watch the calamity of characters duke it out for hands on the hips advising supremacy. There was tic man, a young Mexican guy, slick and this guy with a bandanna and a baseball cap on. The tic guy you know, and there was nothing really stand out about the Mexican guy, but slick and the bandanna hat guy were the bees knees when it comes to archetypes. Slick: A biker looking guy with a few DIY cell block tats on his hands, long unkempt hair, dusty denim pants and big cowboy boots, calling people "slick" at random. The dude with the bandanna and hat didn't say much or offer help, but hovered around the scene with his jeans deliberately slung half way down his thighs looked as if his morning dump had been unceremoniously interrupted. That be what the kids of today are wearing huh? The Austin girls show up and we leave Denny's, satisfied with what we had seen and not up for the extra wait for a table.

We go to a bagel place and over breakfast we learn the Austin girls (Amy and Cali), have gone out the last two nights, both are awfully hung over and have not slept or eaten properly for 48 hours. We all scoff our bagels and hit the road, headed to Red Rock for some boulder jumping. We spent a few hours exploring the terrain, splitting up and eventually joining back up for a debrief. Cindy had spent her rock climbing time sun baking, Cali spent it "napping", while Andy, Amy and I tried to out do each other with how far we could get. There were some fairly fearless jumping across big gaps in rocks ala those scenes in cop movies where a cop runs after the bad guy, jumping from roof to roof - but with less San Fransisco car chases.

Once we got back to the city, the Texans returned to their hostel, Andy went a played hockey, Cindy had a party nap and I went for a bike ride. It really is my happy place, cruising around a fresh city slower than a car but faster than walking. Made it to Fremont street, but the TV roof thing hadn't been switched on yet, so I just wandered about looking at the ghastliness of early afternoon Vegas. One weird thing was the music selection coming from the PA system. Tool's Sober played through its entirety and made for a disturbing soundtrack to groups of people stumbling about with 2-foot long margaritas in hand. Lenny Kravits came along straight after Tool and saved the day, returning the atmosphere to the preferred level non-confrontational subliminal niceties.

What is with this country and booze? I know this place was one of the few places prohibition caught on and the federal government withheld road funding a few years ago to those states who didn't tow the 21yo drinking age line, but jeez. Not letting people drink until they're 21? It's like a time bomb ticking away, finally exploding on the streets of Vegas, New Orleans or Cancun. When I was in Mexico, it was a few weeks before the US school year Spring Break. Some of the older Mexicans, who don't speaka da english too well, think "Spring Break", the war cry of beefcake college students, translates to "DESTROY EVERYTHING". I saw the same thing in Prague with English Bucks/Hens nights. These dumb arse westerners go to these places, get thoroughly liquored up on the cheap local poison and then maraud through the street, shouting, punching, smashing, shitting; all with assumed license. This may have something to do with this uptight feeling i get from the general public. Maybe that has to more with being ruled by fear, no public health care and ridiculous levels of competition between thy neighbor, but for argument sake I'm chalking this one up to the booze. By the age of 21, I had gotten most of my stupid drunken experiences out of the way, writing them off with other stupid things I did as a teenager. That said, many of the stupid things I did were a result of being drunk, but let's not get tangled up in detail here. In Austria, you can walk into a bar when you're 16 and buy a beer, but that country produced Red Bull, Hitler and the schnitzel so take from that what you will.

Leaving Fremont street, I headed back towards the centre to meet up with Andy and his mates for post-hockey beers. Beers out of the way, i chuck the bike in the back of his car and head back to the apartment. We hang for a bit then headed to the Stratosphere, the big sky needle casino at the border of the Strip and the old town centre. We wanted to squeeze in a couple of the rides on the top of the building before meeting up with the others. $20 buys you a trip to the roof and two rides. We picked the Big Shot and Insanity. The Big Shot lifted us 200 feet above the top of the building, giving us one of the best views of the Las Vegas Strip you could wish for. After that was Insanity, a rotating swing thing that spins around while being put out over the side of the building. Great stuff that succeeds in confusing your brain into thinking that no matter how many rides you've been on before, this time you really are going to die. I love rides.

The Diamond Club, which is a room that maybe 6 of the casinos have for their high rollers and big spenders was our next destination. Through some imaginative maths, Andy and Cindy are both members and inside we met up with their friends Troy and Heather. In this room, a paradise of free booze, food and entertainment awaits those privileged enough to get inside. As I ordered my third drink and ate my little gourmet sandwich, the line from Withnail and I came to mind "free to those who can afford it, very expensive to those who can't". Gold. I imagine a world where every necessity is comped for you by a big casino. What a socialist utopia that would be.

Once we finished our long island ice teas, we made our way to Jubilee, the quintessential Vegas stage show. Because we had booked our seats the night before (another free service offered with this fancy Diamond club), they were front row centre. Before the show started, I leaned my arm on the stage and just laughed at the situation. The show started, and sure enough it was complete with feathers, elaborate staging and semi nakedness. I've never seen that many boobs in the one place before so close up. Our seats really put us amongst it. I could hear the stage jewelery rattling, see bandaids covering arse tattoos and with the men's cod pieces in the Roman tribute, well lets just say you could tell who waxed and who shaved. Really overwhelming that close up and I suggest to the others the concept of seeing the same show in the same seats, but on acid. The horror. The horror. If you ever get a chance to see it, make note of the seamless transition in scene 8 between the tribute to the victims of the Titanic to the celebration of Yankee Doodle Dandy, complete with 20 semi-nude, semi-spandexed Yankee Doodlers. Who needs acid.

I managed to leave Vegas without gambling my money away, killing my liver (completely) and marrying some slapper. Thanks to Andy and Cindy for providing a totally unexpected but utterly fantastic Vegas adventure.

Next stop: The Grand Canyon.

AMEN!

2007-03-26T10:26:00.000+02:00

finally.. a crazy person talking some sense.

The Desert

2007-03-25T08:08:00.001+02:00

On Thursday, Andy and Laurie flew to Hawaii and left me their car to do with what I wish for a week. Legends. Andy left me some maps and I drove north east into the desert. As I wasn't in any hurry to get anywhere, I took the smaller, older highways rather than the massive, quicker interstate freeways. The landscape changes enough every 10 miles that it doesn't have the same feeling of nowhere as Australian deserts have. Which can be a good or a bad thing depending on the way you look at it. They're also a whole lot smaller, but don't tell a yank another country does something bigger than they do. Once I started getting into the more remote areas, dark clouds took their place above and started doing their thing. The one time I drive through the desert and it rains. It rains hard. Lightning. Thunder. The whole works. I parked the car on a hill and watched a couple of storm fronts battle it out about 15 miles away. The open bits of sky between them bathed the landscape in bright desert sun, while where I was sitting was dark, gloomy and wet. I drove on, passing through little towns, using a map and Andy's GPS to navigate my way there. On the south side of the Joshua Tree National Park, I stopped at a little diner in a town called Desert Center. I walk in and find chaos. There are three people scurrying about trying to clean up the water leaking through the decaying roof. Containers of every size and shape are littered about the floor collecting the brownish water dripping from the ceiling. I find a dry seat, sit down, order some food and start chatting with one of the ladies who work there. A 24/7 truck stop, Desert Center Cafe used to be one of those towns everyone stopped at before the big Interstates bypassed it. During the 1940s, the army stationed 400,000 troops at a nearby base, translating into lots of business for all the locals. Now all that's left of these days is some dusty old photos of the building when the neon worked and there were Borises parked out the front.

I finished eating, left and drove on into dusk. I figured I could find a spot to pull over and sleep the night, I just wasn't sure where. I was running low on fuel and pulled into a place on the border of California and Nevada. The pumps had closed 20 minutes earlier and the next town where I could get petrol from (Needles), was another 50 miles away. I drove on, a little worried my metric mindset for judging fuel would underestimate the imperial distances involved. I took my chances and reckoned I could make it to Needles ok, but only after finding a place to sleep for the night. I drove for about 20 minutes, found a small dirt side road and drove down it for a little bit. I found a an out of the way space to park and got comfortable. I woke up a few times thinking hillbillies were trying to kill me, but it was just my mind confusing dream with reality. Eventually I drifted off again and had the most vivid dream about Antonio Gramsci and Karl Marx having an argument about socialism. Gramsci was saying to Marx that the reason why his and Engels theory on socialism is flawed was because it doesn't factor in the influence of culture on the populace and only articulated humanity's needs as those necessary for animal survival, failing to accommodate for the complexities of human emotion. Karl Marx retorted saying his theories were just fine and sighted that because his beard looked like Papa Smurf's, he had more authority on the issue.

No, I wasn't eating Peyote.

I woke up early, drove to Needles, filled up and continued on my way. I arrived in Las Vegas early yesterday afternoon and eventually found the place I'm staying, hiding behind one of the behemoth casinos on The Strip. I'm staying with Cindy and Andy (a different Andy), in their plush apartment on the 21st floor of this brand new hotel complex. Nice.

More on Vegas in a couple of days.

watch this space

2007-03-21T19:36:00.003+01:00

San Diego is a military town. There's a few naval bases scattered around the place and the marines have a couple of airports. Top Gun, the movie once described by a friend as America's way of getting over the failure of Vietnam, was filmed here. Up the coast, massive hovercrafts cruise across the beach and into the Pacific, Humvees bounce across the dunes and fighter planes buzz overhead, going through their exercises. Those tax dollars aren't going spend themselves are they?

If you go out at night San Diego, chances are you'll run into someone who works in or with the military. A couple of nights ago, I went out to a wine bar with Andy to celebrate the birthday of one of his friends. Californian wine is not a bad choice if there's no Australian grog laying about. The Merlot I was drinking reminded me of some of the stuff that has come out of the Mclaren Vale. Similar climate maybe? As our group started to thin out, I overheard the people behind me talking about Australia. I shoehorned my way into their conversation and chatted with them for about half an hour. The three guys all worked in the Navy and the girls as nurses. Funny how things don't change. The guys had seen a lot of the world, including a great deal of the port cities in Australia. One of them was telling me the time he had visited Perth. He and another sailor had gone out after an official navy event. Because of the nature of the event, they were both dressed in their full uniforms, so they stuck out like sore thumbs. As the night wore on and the bar hoping became slower, things got a little more groggy and fuses became shorter. They bumped into a group of about 10 students who took a particular disliking to them (thanks to navy guys connections with the war in Iraq), and then proceeded to shout insults at them, descending quickly into a fist fight. 10 vs 2. Not a good outcome. They said they were used to getting lip about being in the military and that everyone understood it was just one of those negative things that came with the job. Next week they're off to Kuwait.

Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, a military cemetery on a hill overlooking San Diego, is set in a beautifully peaceful part of the world. Used as a burial ground as far back as the 1700s (by the Mexicans), it is a place where rest and reflection comes naturally to visitors and occupants alike. A few years ago, when the cemetery was running out of space to commemorate the dead, a wall was erected along the side of the hill facing the city. On the wall, marble tablets engraved with dates, names and religion are lined up in rows. The tablets remember people who have either died during service or who have died since they served. As they start at one end of the wall and work their way across it, filling it as needed. The closer you get to the end of filled tablets, the more recent the dates get. The end tablets baring 2007 are a little weird to see, especially when you see the birth dates are fresher than your own. I couldn't help noticing the blank spaces at the end of these tablets. They reminded me of Anzac Parade in Canberra. There, Australia keeps a collection of statues and monuments honouring the wars Australians have fought and died in. The few times I've been to Canberra, I've wandered up and down this road, checking out the monuments and playing a morbid game of trying to spot similar names to friends and family, occasionally spotting my own name amongst the dead. Reading these names and imagining the poor scared bastard who it belonged to has always got to me. But it wasn't the seemingly endless list of names or the numerous monuments that upset me. It was the empty spaces that had been purposely left for the monuments of future wars that was really spooky.

Thursday

2007-03-19T09:37:00.000+01:00

I spotted this guy in the park, mumbling to himself under a tree, occasionally gesticulating to no one in particular. I walked over to him, introduced myself. He introduced himself as Thursday, invited me to sit and we started chatting about life. After about 5 minutes in he said he apologised for getting confused and then the conversation went more slowly. Thursday was a nice guy who had seen some horrible stuff that broke his mind and eventually robbed him of his ability to navigate through modern day life. Now at the bottom and on the street, Thursday spends his days drunk, trying to forget his time in the military, the jail time he served for shooting someone in LA and his stint at a mental institution in Colorado.

Walking through the downtown area of San Diego, I saw many people who looked lost. It was as if life itself had run over them and left dazed and confused. A great deal of the people sitting or shuffling around the streets looked as if they had lived there for some time. Badly camouflaged bottles in brown paper bags. Shopping trolley and rubbish bags full of all their worldly possessions. After travelling through a bunch of third world countries, poverty is such a different experience when the person asking for help speaks English and has blue eyes. I visit these "rich" countries like USA and England and see more homeless, lost souls and broken human beings than I did in places like Mexico and China.

People in charge of things, please invest more time and energy into mental health programs. Don't let Thursday be our tomorrow.

parliament

2007-03-16T23:39:00.001+01:00

An excerpt from a conversation between an old man and the guy sitting opposite him I overheard on the bus yesterday.

Old man: Hey You! You know what a Leprechaun is? You know, those little men who live at the end of rainbows with gold and stuff? The Irish things.

guy: umm.. yeah

OM: Well that's you! All you Mexicans are like leprechauns to me.

guy: I'm actually from India

OM: India! Dang (slaps thigh). Which part? Bangladesh or some shit?

guy: no.. Just India

The bus here in America is a depressing place. Forlorn faces, vacant stares, shabby clothes, no smiles. Like a Dementor, the bus sucks all life, hope and motivation from you. I'm guessing for people in California (where appearance can mean everything), not having a car can really put you on the bottom of the social hierarchy. That is if you let it get to you. If you’re not living downtown, suburbs are spread out, while services are concentrated and the public transport is fairly substandard. The car is king here. I remember back in Adelaide being disturbed by traffic jams consisting of cars with only one person in it. Here it is far worse. Apart from Andy (who rides his bike or takes the bus to work), everyone drives.

The P-Funk gig was cool, but George hasn't done as well as Bowie or Jagger when it comes to massive amounts of drugs and the passing of time. For most of the gig he hobbled around the stage, waving his arms about from time to time, occasionally holding his ear to egg the audience on for cheering. He did sing a few lines in a couple songs, but dressed in pjs and moving slowly, he looked as if he was at a hospital rather than a gig. Regardless of George's condition, the show was entertaining, with Parliament banging out tunes for almost 4 hours. Thankfully about 2 hours in, the tall people in the audience standing in front of me all left. Truth be told, Americans are generally quite tall. Last night, I couldn't help noticing the backs of people's shoulders and heads. While at the MX concert in Mexico City, people were generally shorter, making for a nice clear view of the stage.

I've been listening to the music recommended by locals all throughout my trip. Each country visted has meant a whole new bunch of music to listen to. England charged me up for at least a couple of months, and yeilded more Australian music than expected. Now that I'm in California, I'm hearing stuff popular with the locals. Having not heard The Grateful Dead until now, they are certainly not the metal band I had always imagined them to be. Favs have been The Dears (who I thought was another side project of Damon Albam), Regina Spektor and Mogwai's soundtrack for the Zidane movie.

Right now, I’m on the train with Andy to go visit Laurie in Irvine for the weekend. The train seems a little more exclusive than the bus, but that maybe because they serve beer and coffee. Irvine is in Orange County, where the highest concentration of Hummers per household in America is. Great. On the topic of being shallow, I can’t believe the superficial commentary of this BBC article about Valerie Plame. Very much from the bottle journalism here. That’s opinion, not news.

I’m still dreading (secretly looking forward to), trying out the fast food here. There is so many burger chains it’s ridiculous. Wendy’s, In and Out, Jack in a Box, Burger King and the all mighty McDonalds. Incidentally, a big golden arches sign is visible from the other side of the border while in the line up to cross over from Mexico. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is here in force and Starbucks has its own ice coffee in regular shops (still doesn’t compare to Farmers Union). And there are these things called Triscuits, which are like savoury mini wheats, but they are way too salty to eat heaps of them. I think I’ll skip on the 44 oz sodas that are usually found in chubby little hands.

behind the 8-ball

2007-03-15T21:32:00.001+01:00

The Marlbourgh MX Beat.

The oddest music festival I have ever attended. Maria's other couchsurfer, Liam (another Australian), had joined us for the day's adventures. After farting about for a couple of hours, we made our way to the venue, an area of undeveloped land in between a bunch of fresh looking office buildings and ritzy hotels on the outskirts of the city. We park the car and just as we get out it begins to rain. By the time we got there the event was sold out. We needed tickets and after about 20 minutes of bugging people in the line, we get them and enter. We go through security, get patted down and then get corralled into a huge long tent, lined on both sides by about 100 people sitting at computers. Not understanding the signs or instructions, Liam and I follow the gesticulations of a security guard and end up at two terminals next to each other. We're are asked for ID but I wasn't carrying any and became worried I wasn't going to get in. The girl serving me just shrugged, asked if I smoked and which band I was mainly here to see. Liam on the other hand who was carrying ID, had it scanned and then had to sign his name into the computer with a digital tablet thingo. We kept exchanging "WTF?" looks, as at all the festivals we had gone to, neither of us had experienced such a thing. We get in and the fun begins.

The event (sponsored by a cigarette company), was giving out free packets of smokes, and there was a rumour floating about that a big tent in one corner of the venue would open its doors after 11pm and give away free booze. Liam and I scoffed at this ridiculous idea and bought beers. We watched a couple of bands together, met a few of Maria's friends and wandered around the venue. At some point we lost each other and I bumped into one of Maria's American mates, who I chatted with for a bit. Originally from New York, she has been living in Mexico for the last 4 years. She had an interesting perspective about the place but said that her time was almost up and was about to move back home. Maybe. The next band to come out was Architecture in Helsinki, who strangely enough have a bit of a following in Mexico. As soon as they started playing, all the locals begun jumping around singing all the lyrics. Surprising stuff and left me feeling a little un-Australian, not knowing the lyrics and all. During one of the songs I did some muppeting, where you sing the chorus bit (the part everyone knows), and then move your mouth along with what you think is the lyrics for the rest of the song. I swear the girl playing the keys looked just like ex-dollhouse member Marlaina. I remember an odd cowinkydink about the band and laugh to myself. It's 5! starts playing and I sing along with the Mexicans, with only minimal muppeting this time. I met some other Australian's in the audience and danced with them for a while. I tell a few people that the band is not from Finland, and then rattle off a few more Australian band names (AC/DC from Australian?). To my surprise, Midnight Oil is well known in Mexico and were pretty successful here in their day.

I'm not really sure of the running order of bands that night. I spent most of the time bouncing between chatting with people, waiting for food and walking over to the stage area to see who was playing. I think the next band was Tapes n Tapes, which were cool. Spoon (a band I listened a lot to while cycling Austria), were a little more subdued than expected and took a while to warm up. There was more 'sitting on the floor and playing with peddles in a prog music fashion' than I expected from the lead guy. The big screens on either side of the stage made the band member's heads look 5 metres tall and I imagine what a 5 metre head would be like. Weird. At some point during Spoon I run into Liam and the others and we dance about to the more up tempo poppier stuff the band saved for the end.

Spoon finishes up, the mystery tent opens its flaps and sure enough, there's free booze flowing thick and fast. Tequila, whiskey, vodka and beer. All free and easy to get. Hardly any line up. Liam and I discuss the likelihood and possible results of such an alcohol policy at a Big Day Out and the idea scares us. Adult are playing on stage as we collect our first drinks. Both members of the group look like they need some sun and some happy pills. Datarock were awesome, even if they are The Casio Brothers with more members, instruments and success. There was a Brazilian band on after them, but by this stage my free boozed memory had become somewhat hazy. The next 4 hours was spent dancing up the front to another electronic group and a couple of DJs. Me and alcohol is a real hit and miss affair. If I'm sitting around at a pub, anything more than 3 or 4 drinks and I get sleepy and want a nice lie down. Put me somewhere I can dance and I turn into this crazed alcohol fueled moves machine, ripping up the dance floor and downing the booze like there's no tomorrow. Well at least that's the impression I have of myself after a few. I think the girl from Architecture in Helsinki came out in a mask and danced around on stage for a bit, but I can't confirm this. At 3am, the ugly lights come on, the music stop and we drive home. The sleep of angels follows.

After the best rest I've had in ages, I wake up at 12 and remember I need to be at the airport at 3. My legs are sore from dancing and packing is a slow affair. I say my goodbyes and leave the house at 1:45. Plenty of time. I jump in a cab for the short journey to the metro station and look at a map for the most direct route to the airport. I figure out a way there that is more stops but only one transfer, rather than the two or three transfers and less stops. I jump on a train at 2pm, but it is really slow between the stations. I contemplate whether or not to take the alternate route (the one with more transfers), but stick to my plan, missing my 3 opportunities of taking the other lines. One stop before my transfer station, the train stops and has a rest for about 10 excruciatingly long minutes. Argh.. While we wait, I buy a CDs being sold by a guy walking around with a speaker pack on his back which is blaring out 80s cock rock and hair metal. The train starts up again and I get out at my transfer station, walking as briskly as possible with a full backpack and sore legs. I turn a corner and the first entrance to the other line is blocked off. Oh dear. I walk a little faster and see that the other two entrances are blocked for renovations. Fuck. My fantastic plan is unravelling in front of me, my legs are sore and my bag is heavy. There is no way I can kick myself for not taking the other transfers. I ask a guard in broken, slightly panicky Spanish what I am supposed to do. He points to the stairs and says "gratis autobus". Right. I walk even quicker up the stairs (my legs are really killing me now), and find the bus going to the airport, but it is spilling out the doors full and I can't get on. The guard at the stop instructs me to wait for the next one and I feel the colour disappear from my face. The trip to the airport now depends on Mexico City traffic and I think to myself, "I'm going to miss my plane". Another bus comes and I scramble on. As the watch I had been using was lost in Cuba (fucking Cuba), my only reference of time is casual glances at other people's wrists and the occasional informative billboard. Problem is, none of them share a common time and I hedge my bets as to which one is correct. For the guy sitting two people up from me, my plane has already taken off - the guy standing next to me, check in has just opened - the billboard we drive by, security should be waving a metal detector around my privates. FUCK FUCK FUCK. The opening sequence of Four Weddings and a Funeral comes to mind and I think to myself how did that ever air on American TV.

Once my fit of internal swearing finished, I concede that I have missed my 3pm flight and think what I could do in Mexico city while I wait for my next one. Just as the wave of acceptance and calmness dulls the panic in my head, the bus stops and everyone gets out. I glance at the guy with the most optimistic time and reckon to myself I can still make it by 3. I figure airlines are like cinemas. Sure, they say the movie starts at 3, but after all the ads and trailers, the film really doesn't begin until 3:20. I jump on the metro for the remaining two stops and arrive at the airport station. I see the station's clock: 2:55. I can do this. I say to my legs, "ok i know we had a big night last night and that we are currently carrying more than usual, but let's make a deal. You get me on this flight and I will sit on a beach for a week". I run. I run like a terrified gazelle runs from a cheeta. On the station's stairs the muscles in my legs feel like they are going to rip through the skin and trip me over to make me stop running. I almost get cleaned up by a taxi crossing a road, but I keep going. . I enter the airport, glance at the time: 2:57 - I just need to run a bit further. I cn do this. Fuck. Deep Heat is pumping through my leg's veins and my bag feels like I'm giving a piggyback to a horse. I catch sight of my airline's office, turn and my shoes lose grip, with the extra weight of my pack skidding me into a wall. I pick myself up and out of breath I indicate to the clerk that I am indeed here and totally capable of boarding my flight to Tijuana. The clock behind him reads 2:58. I'm desperate. I don't want the only flight that I've missed in my life to be this one. He looks at me, asks for my ID and says "check in for this 4pm flight doesn't open for another couple of minutes, but I'll put you through now". I realise that at some point between the house and the airport, I must have got what time I need to be at the airport confused with the actual flight time. Idiot.

-----------------------------

The last couple of days here in California have been great. A really laid back, relaxing time. The weather has been beautiful and the beach is really close to Andy's place. There was a funky marine layer cloud system the other day, which made for a great view from the nearby hills of the low cloud settling on the water, stopping at the shore. Going into the built up areas is a little weird. Depending on which way you look, California can be either super beautiful or super plastic. We went out the other night with a few of Andy's mates to a couple of bars, ending up at a 'dive bar', where pool, darts and 80s music took us up to close. Yesterday afternoon I walked down to the beach and sat on some grass just near the sand and read. I've been playing with my new camera and lens combo, loving the results. Tonight we go north to the next town and see George Clinton and The P-Funk play. Bam!

Good luck to Sarah and Aidan with your wedding this weekend. You're both such lovely people and I wish you the best for the future.

California Über Alles

2007-03-14T23:30:00.001+01:00

I’m not even supposed to be here today! - Dante Hicks, Clerks

It’s funny how the best laid plans go awry. Right now, I should be settling into some cozy arts admin job in Ireland, making connections, meeting clients, getting a smart haircut, wearing a suit, etc. During the evenings I should be sitting in a pub drinking Guinness, getting ready for the craziness of St Pat’s Day with a home ground advantage.

But I’m not.

I’m in California.

This is my first time in the US of A and I don’t think the idea has concept has hit me yet. While driving between the border and where I’m staying, I saw American flags fluttering on the tops of buildings. I kept thinking to myself “that’s odd, why are people fluttering that flag?”, then it clicked, I’m in America. Der. I’ve been staying with Andy, the American guy I met up with while I was in Hungary. Andy has been a real champ opening up his house and allowing me to get eBay stuff posted there. I now have a replacement camera and a swanky new lens. I’ve met a bunch of his local friends, have been riding his bike around checking out the area and will be hanging out with his equally cool wife Laurie this weekend. Southern California’s dry, warm weather is pretty similar to back at home in Adelaide and for the last few days I’ve been hanging out on Andy’s front porch, laying in the sun reading and doing interweb stuff. This is new.

What does warm the cockles of my heart is the amount of Toyota Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid cars getting about the place. What disturbs me is that for every hybrid, there are at least fifteen massive V8 SUVs and high performance big block American sports cars clogging up the roads. None of which look like they’ve ever been near a dirt road or race track in their life. I’m hoping that owning a hybrid here in America isn’t just a fad, as being quite a difficult vehicle to secure, the exclusiveness of owning one seems more important than the environmental benefits. But you know the more the merrier. Apparently you get around the same miles per gallon with a VW Jetta TDI, but the emissions are much less on a Prius. Anyway, I’m not in the market to buy a car. Or am I? More on that later.

One of things that have really overwhelmed me a little has been the shear amount of choice one has here when it comes to what you buy, with cafes and fast food joints being the big surprise. The many different varieties, combination and configurations one’s breakfast and coffee can come in can be a bit confusing, especially after a night on the turps. This morning, when I asked “Can I have one of those bacon and egg sandwiches with a coffee please?”, the next 5 minutes was spent choosing what type of bread, milk, egg style, spread, sugar, etc rather than me eating my greasy morning saviour.

This range of choice has prompted more existential questions to spring up in my head. ie – does more choice give people freedom or just a greater false reassurance of freedom? What has prompted this thought has been the political debate in the comments section of a previous post, where an anonymous person and I have been discussing the merits of communism verses the evils of capitalism. Socialism fails because it relies on everyone getting on with each other, which as history shows, doesn’t tend to happen on the world-wide scale required for socialism to work. Socialism would work if all humans interacted on the same level as one another, with everyone living under the environment and controlled conditions. This would be also have to be a world with no emotions, no desires, no jealousy, no betrayal. Imagine all the people, living life in peace. You hoo hoo ooo ah oo.

Idiot.

dead-set ledgend

2007-03-13T17:56:00.001+01:00

On Sunday, as Australian army Black Hawk helicopters thumped overhead, reporter Eric Campbell and cameraman David Martin from ABC television's Foreign Correspondent program contacted Reinado supporters and then walked with them for two days through rainforest. Constantly evading Australian surveillance, they were led towards a jungle hideout. Finally, a coded telephone call led them down a mountain road and Reinado emerged from the darkness — wearing an Australian army uniform. READ MORE

Awesome. No wonder he's my favorite Australian journalist.

like sands through the hourglass

2007-03-10T20:09:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I met up with Abraham, the couchsurfing guy who contacted me after I already had said yes to my current host. I caught the metro all the way out to where he studies at the University city, which is exactly that: a city. With a student population of over 250,000, a supermarket (which doesn't sell booze on Fridays), a internal bus service (9 different routes), an extinct lava pit (man I wish I had my camera), a library which is covered in the world's largest mosaic, a fire station and an ex-Olympic stadium all to it's own, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México is a behemoth of a campus. Abraham took me for a drive around it. The drive took a good 20 minutes, and there were a couple of traffic snarls along the way. We hung out at the campus for a while with a few of his friends, and then headed back to his girlfriend's place for a while. We had some beers, mingled with a few more of his friends, ate tacos and left for a party for his friend who had just finished his masters. We got a bit lost on the way, but it turned out that the party was a 10 minute walk from where I'm staying. I dropped some stuff off and grabbed a jumper. A great party, I met plenty of interesting people there and learned about student culture in Mexico City.

You know that time of the year when it's daylight savings and you have to move all of your clocks forward by an hour? And that one clock you forget to change will be the one you'll be relying on on that morning you have an important meeting at work? Birthdays are kind of like this. Your brain goes through the motions of changing every age register inside you head to a new number, so that when the question "how old are you?" is asked, the new updated number comes out. However, after a couple of beers at the masters party last night, my thoughts must have been mingling in the lounge room inside my head, where the time on the VCR had yet to be flicked forward to 28. During a conversation I was asked how old I was, and casually I answered "27", and continued on with the conversation. About a minute later I realised my mistake and then thought I would sound stupid correcting myself on how old I am, so I kept quiet. Like a chump. Now I feel like I've covered over my true age through some desperate act of clinging on to youth rather than the true reason, the onset of dementia thanks to old age.

For what it's worth, I had a pretty good birthday this year. Maria and her folks took me out to a fancy seafood restaurant and treated me to some Mexican / Central American dishes. There was plenty of corn related food type things, and surprisingly a dish with raw fish, which didn't taste anything like Japanese food. Compared to the previous two birthday (2006 I was in the middle of giving away everything I owned to go travelling, 2005 everything seemed to be falling apart around me), it was a fairly good day. After a party nap, Maria took me out to meet some more of her friends at a little house party which continued until the wee hours of the morning. Dancing occured, chatting photos transpired and a shoe was thrown out a window, supposedly never to be returned. While I miss my mates back home, I was treated as if I had been in Maria's inner circle of friends for years - which for someone I only met only two days earlier is pretty cool.

Today I go to the MX Beat concert. Tomorrow I go to Tijuana.

i walk the line

2007-03-08T19:18:00.001+01:00

Mexico City is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to Mexico City.

Ok.. Mexico City is big, but thanks to it being wedged between a few mountains, it doesn’t feel as infinite as Tokyo or Shanghai. The smog also keeps things in check, becasue once you get up high enough to get an overview of the city, the chances of seeing any further than about 10km is pretty slim. I’m really loving it though, but it’s weird not having my camera to record stuff. There is so much to see and do here, and the people I’ve been staying with have been awesome. I continually find myself staying with females with this couchsurfing thing, but I assure you, I am asking an equal number of guys as I am girls. Girls just seem to reply more often. Must be my charming photo on my profile.

The first day in Mexico City was a blur.

Having caught the plane from Havana at 6am (with a 3am checking and an 11pm mugging beforehand), I made my way to the Australian Embassy to fix up the lost passport issue with only a 20 minute nap on the plane powering me through. I had some help from a British guy and his Austrian girlfriend who had caught the same flight as me. They had a map of where I wanted to go and about 8 times more brain power than I was able to muster, so I followed them into the centre of town assuming the embassy was there. Sure enough, it was in a satellite centre about 6 metro stops and a transfer from where I thought it was. We swapped email addresses and I floated my way to the embassy through the city’s vast metro network. I arrived at the station, got out my compass and headed west. I heard that life was peaceful there. I trudged through a few food markets, walked across a rather nice park and briefly shared directions with a really attractive Mexican girl. I fall in love really easily.

The guys at the Embassy noted that I looked a little strung out and took pity on my updated situation. “So let’s get this straight, you lost your passport 2 weeks ago and were mugged last night? Right. Cuba wasn’t so good on you then?”. I assured them that I had been travelling for almost a year with no issues and that Cuba seemed to be where my number was up. While waiting for the paperwork to be processed, I found my way to a Starbucks for coffee and internet. Oh my. What a difference a day makes. 24 hours earlier I had drank an espresso (one of three things on the menu), in a central Havana restaurant where the phrase “you want flies with that?” wouldn’t have seemed out of the ordinary. Now I was in Chai Latte with skim soy milk land, where 5 types of chocolate cookies are for sale and the girl behind the counter smiles as she gives me my change (correct). I called my sister. I tried to call my mum. I sent some emails. I read lots of news. It’s weird to describe the most polluted city in the world as a place that feels like a breath of fresh air. I’m totally convinced now that communism doesn’t work and never will. Self interest, nepotism and greed will always be its downfall, where as these things drive capitalism. Sure, some people miss out, but they should stop being homeless, disabled and dumb and stuff. Unless we have robots and computers organising society and telling us what to do, communism will never work. And I don’t care what Red Evan says, even if he does agree to watch the Matrix with me.

I returned to the Australian embassy and found myself waiting a little bit longer. I flicked through their copies of The Australian and cringed at the tourism video playing in the corner featuring our fearless leader spurting off some bullshit about how Australia celebrates its multicultural way of life. Just as long as you don’t look too foreign. I tune out and amuse myself by making an impromptu “DUNNY” sign for the toilets. Got to make fellow Aussies feel at home when they go to lay some cable. Paper work gets sorted, I need to return in a couple of days to pick up my Emergency Passport and I go hunt down some food. I then call Violeta and organise where to meet up with her. Other side of town. Great.

I arrive at the Metro station and walk out into the middle of a pirate dvd and taco circus. Fuck. I’m so not ready for this. Ducking in and out of first person and recollective tenses, I find my way to a clear bit of footpath and look for the Telmex sign Violeta said would be the first thing I see as I left the station. Nope. Not there. Two girls, one with curly blonde hair and another with straight dark hair approach me. “Hi. How are you?” I assume this is Violeta and her friend and ask “how did you know it was me?”. “umm.. We didn’t”. It wasn’t them. I ask a few people where the Telmex place is and the point across a road which is 4 lanes wide in each direction with a 100 metre strip of grass and trees between. Sort of like a big version of Port Road back in Adelaide, but with the chaos of 1,000 Japanese butterflies fluttering their wings. Someone is waving to me. Yep.. There is certainly someone waving at me. Ha.. So that’s what a Mexican Wave looks like. I get back to Violeta’s place. Conversation consists mostly of me recollecting the previous night’s events and me expressing my interest in showering and passing out somewhere dark and quite.

Today I head to Coyoacán. I went there last week with French Sarah for some funny looking interpretive dance and yucky tasting drink. I was stopped in the street by a bunch of men dressed like mosquitoes, who then interviewed me in Spanish. I think I minced my words and said "penis" rather than "I'm having a lovely day, thanks for asking". This got a laugh and was considered ridiculous from a bunch of guys standing around in full body lycra suits, with tea strainers for eyes. There was a camera involved and according to the people I'm staying with, the likelihood of me popping up on some random Mexican cable channel is quite high. Frida Kahlo's place is out that way, so is Trotsky's. There are also some cool clothing stores where I'm hoping to refresh my wardrobe.

PS - is this not one of the best festival line ups you've ever seen?

we're all the same underneath

2007-03-07T18:39:00.001+01:00

Yesterday, I went for a stroll through Chapultepec, the massive park near the financial and diplomatic area of Mexico City. On the recommendation of my sister, I was headed to the Museum of Anthropology and Natural History. The walk through the park past all the stalls selling the contents of an upended showbags, wrestling masks and funny looking corn chips is worth the visit alone. After flirting with the idea of buying some 10 Peso sunnies, I got a little hungry and scouted for a place to eat. I spied some food stalls off the main path and headed towards them. Half way down the path, a guy brandishing a menu came running up behind to direct me to his stall. As I had my headphones in I only heard him when he was right next to me, and he scared the shit out of me. I guess I’m still a bit jumpy with that personal space thing. No way was I eating at his dog’s bowl taco stand now. After finding a place that looked ok, at the same moment I decided to buy something without meat I forgot the Spanish word for beans. While hunting my phrase book for the word, a young blonde hair gent, dressed in a white shirt and a black tie, with a black name badge came up and asked me if I needed help. Sure. I was hungry, a little tired and totally up for this Mormon to process my order for me. A cheese beanie taco. It has a different name than the taco, which I've totally forgotten, but for argument sake is a big taco.

With my order finalised, I ask the nearby table of Mormons if I can join them. I figure it can’t hurt to sit down and chat with these guys, as they are sure to speak English if anything. Just don’t get talking about Jesus and all that other nonsense as that always ends badly when this little ape gets talking about that fairy tale shit. We talk about travelling, the logistics involved in being a missionary in a devoutly catholic country, bikes (and not riding them in Mexico City because you will die), and growing up in other countries on account of parents being missionaries. I’m fascinated with people who grow up under these conditions. No matter what their political leanings, religious beliefs or musical tastes, I always find their stories interesting. Maybe this is because I love travel or grew up in sleepy little Semaphore, but I dig chatting to these people. I tell them about my random Mormon meeting in Hungary and they laugh. I work out that it’s March 6, one year since I left Australia and there’s a few nods of approval from the Mormons. We’ve kept the conversation polite (ie all about me), and the subject of god and his magic powers hasn’t come up. Then one of the older, more well trained door salesman pops the question: “so do you believe in god?”

Great. There goes a nice, normal conversation about bikes, Mexico and travelling. I know it’s something that occupies most of your life, but once I said “no” to the god question, you could have worked it out that I didn’t want to visit your temple or watch your Spanish videos about why I’ve had it so wrong for so long. But no, this isn’t a normal conversation. This is a sales pitch. The biggest problem I have with Mormons, Jehovahs, Resistance, Unionists and any other membership dependent organisation is that it’s just a fucking pyramid scheme. Like friends lost to Herblife and Amway, you can’t have a normal conversation with them. They are always looking for an in to get you hooked onto their idea, to help you understand that the answer to you’re every woe is somehow found in the magic 9 step program, previewed in the brocure they’re leaving with you. I had this a few years ago when I ran into a friend at a pub I hadn’t seen in ages. As I was about to leave, I gave her my mobile number and we said we’d catch up in a few days. We caught up, and within about 5 minutes she was on the play about this amazing new system she’s discovered. This thoroughly pissed me off, as she had only been keen to catch up with me to snare me in her sticky web of sales pitch. Nonce. I saw her a couple of years later. She said that the whole thing had fallen in a heap about 4 months later and that she ended up spending more money than she made on whatever the snake oil she was peddling.

“Well, our lord Jesus Christ has many answers for you.”

“Funny, I didn’t have any questions. Look, religion is great for building community and giving people hope when there is none. When you guys travel overseas it must be great to be able to find people with a similar way of thinking and hang out with them. Sort of like an instant community. But sorry guys, it’s just not my thing.”

He then goes into a diatribe of how his sister had cancer and how he prayed for her and then magically two weeks later it left her body. I then told him about how a friend of mine’s parents, who were devoutly religious and had spent the younger years as missionaries, had a bad car accident thanks to a drunk driver hitting them. My friend’s mum was killed (after a rather painful, drawn out death), and her dad had lost one of his legs and his best friend. My friend, a girl who believed in god, first got angry at god and then lost her faith. The Mormon said that god sometimes does things to test our faith and that his faith had been tested on a few occasions. I decided not to get into my old anti-religion routine where I give converting the bible basher into an atheist a go, but I resent them having a 5 minute conversation with me and then trying to devalue everything I believe in. No point acting hypocritical and doing the same thing. I did think afterwards that riding a bike through Mexico City would be a good way of testing one's faith and wish I had challenged them to some kind of duel. Extreme Mormons maybe?

I finished eating and as if to convince me of his ideas, the team leader tells me about the magic healing powers which had been handed down to him from some old guy who touched him as a kid. Hmm.. I get given a little card inviting me to the temple where there are plenty of videos and material for me to see. Me: “it’s in Spanish right?” Mormon: “errr, yeah. But I’m sure someone there could explain it to you”. I decide to play their game and invite them to come to the Natural History Museum with me. “It’s very informative and I’ve been told it’s really good.” The sales pitch guy looks at me uncomfortably. I think he worked out what just transpired. We say our goodbyes and leave it at that.

The Museum was interesting. Enough English to keep me off the street for a few hours. I ran into the Danish guys I had met in Cuba and again on the top of the pyramids last week. Their group had now been reduced to 2, with one of them going to Brazil and the other one doing her own thing in Mexico. We all decide the world is a small place and casually say goodbye, with the idea of randomly bumping into each other somewhere else. I laid outside on the wall of the pond warming myself up in the sun, drifting off into dusk like sleep for about 4 minutes while listening to music. Afterwards, I walked through the park, bought a cup of fruit, which I ate with the help of a squirrel and an old lady asking for money.

One weird thing I noticed when I started to use the internet again here in Mexico, was discovering I’m being stalked. Well, not really. Back in September I signed up for this thing called Last FM and then completely forgot about it. Ever since then, every song I’ve listened to on my computer has been logged and then uploaded to this website for all to see. I only discovered this when I did a search for a friend of mines band on Google, which then brought up my profile on Last FM. I’ve now added a link to it in the side menu of this page.

Bugs

2007-03-07T05:07:00.001+01:00

I have written good stuff about Cuba, but right now it’s in my bad books and I will continue to represent it as a backward hole devoid of culture and full of criminals until Fidel gives me a phone call to personally apologise for the misadventures I met with while in his horrid little country.

Mexican adventures soon.

And here's the reason why I'm not in California now:

Marlboro MX Beat - March 10 - 75 Peso ($10 AUD)
Architecture in Helsinki, Spoon, Tapes 'n Tapes, Cansei de Ser Sexy, Diplo, ADULT, Datarock, bonde do role, Los Super Elegantes, Chetes, La Gusana Ciega and los superelegantes

It didn’t end when the fat lady danced

2007-03-02T02:47:00.001+01:00

My last day in Cuba was great.

Sunday - February 18
I left my casa around eleven to go have a friendly chat with my original casa (more on this later). Afterwards, I wandered over to a Cubano café and grabbed an espresso for about 5 Aussie cents, then walked around for a bit killing time before meeting up at noon with the two Swiss girls I had met the day before. After about twenty minutes of waiting, I went back to the casa, grabbed my laptop and headed for one of the fancy hotels to do some typing in their café, where me and the laptop wouldn’t stick out as much. I found a spot and began typing away, moving around the room periodically to avoid the Cuban band who were stalking an elderly Canadian couple who were also playing their own version of musical chairs. Seriously, some of these bands in hotel lobbies in Cuba remind me of seagulls fighting over burnt chips. Once I had had my fill of maracas and halitosis, I headed back to the casa to drop my stuff off. On the way there I heard my name being called out from somewhere. Looking around I find the Swiss girls hanging out of a window in a nearby building, waving at me. They had mixed up 11 for 12 and had decided to do a tour of what looks like a deserted building. We arrange to meet up in an hour and then hang out for the afternoon as planned. I return to the hotel lobby, read a little and just as I was about to take my turn on the internet, the girls show up and we go searching for lunch. Hmmm.. Greasy fried rice. Now with more bone and less correct change. We walked over to China town (I only saw one person who vaguely looked as if they had once thought about visiting China.. No actual Chinese people here), and introduced them to Senoritas, my favourite pastry delight in Cuba.

The girls invite me back to their casa, which is a 10 minute drive from the centre. After debating prices with a row of dodgy looking taxis, we decide to change tactics and try our luck at flagging down a random car. In Cuba, there is a culture of ride sharing and isn’t really hitchhiking when it’s done on this scale. It’s simple. If a car is going the same place you want to go and there’s room for you, then jump in. For example, it’s the law that all government cars (the ones with the blue licence plates), have to pick up people. There are even dudes dressed in yellow stationed on major roads keeping track of this. A car stops for us and we stumble through some Spanish to tell the driver where we want to go. The girls cram into the back and I hop into the front seat. Turns out our driver is a dentist and he speaks enough English for me to have a conversation with him. Dr Angel has two daughters, who both live in Florida and he is unhappy with the conditions he must work under. There isn’t enough money for the right equipment and the pay (equal to around $50 Australian a month), is a pittance. He feels change is coming and has been looking forward to the time he is able to travel abroad freely and maybe visit his grandchildren. We didn’t drop the F word, but it was the white elephant sitting on the dashboard keeping watch over the conversation. We get to our destination, give him a couple of CUC for the ride (about 5% of his monthly wage as a dentist), and say our goodbyes. He hands us his card and says that if we ever need help while in Cuba, he’s our man. We walk down to the girl’s casa and the lively Mrs Guevara opens the door and gives me a big hug. I had met her the previous night and we had gotten on really well, considering our lack of a mutual language. She’s in her 50s, rather corpulent and has a laugh like a klaxon (which is accompanied by a hearty slap on the back).

The girls tell Mrs Guevara about the attempted scam of two jinetera (female con artists), who had tried to make the girls pay a ridiculous sum of money for some drinks they didn’t want. This got Mrs Guevara all steamed up and she started educating the Swiss girls on what to do next time they encountered such a scam. This did involve plenty of gesticulating and words like “putana” and “joder”, and even while my grasp on the Spanish tongue isn’t that great, I could tell she was annoyed.

I realised I still had my laptop with me and seeing that the girls had just started their trip and I was just about to finish mine, we went through a few of my photos from the places they were intending to visit. Afterwards, Mrs Guevara offered to make us all hot chocolate. She went and turned on the radio to a local salsa channel and I took the opportunity to practice my dancing with her. Hearty laughs (and back slaps), ensued and the hot chocolate was served, which was much better tasting than the shit they dished out at the chocolate museum. I gave one of the Swiss girls my camera and got her to take some action shots of me and Mrs Guevara dancing. Heart warming stuff.

After chocolate, the girls and I went dinner hunting, and ended up walking a long way through what looked to be a normal suburb. Trees, driveways, lights. It was all there. We asked a few people where to go for pizza and eventually found a place that would allow us to eat there as long as we didn’t take up any of the tables. While we waited, we sat on a concrete bench, drank our overpriced drinks (from a fridge which had caught fire just as we were being served), and then received our pizzas, which we were handsomely overcharged for. We ate our Cuban Hawaiian pizzas (the least offensive of Cuban pizza), on the restaurant’s front steps, not taking any care with the spillage of pineapple coming out of the end of our taco like pizza. We headed back to the casa, passing a Don Bosco community centre (reminded me of the one on Sydney road in Melbourne), which was hosting the local AA meeting. We flirted with the idea of getting a taxi, which ended up being way too complicated. We got back to the casa and we said our goodbyes. I was on limited time as I had to get back into town to grab my bag and head to the airport before the taxis dried up. I walked back to Dias de Octobre (the main rod heading back into town), and jumped on a local bus. I was quite chuffed with this as I hadn’t ridden in the rickety local buses yet and now that I was just about to leave the country, I had got my chance. The 15 year old driver wrestled with a gear stick which was bigger than him and the guy collecting the fare had already organised piles of peso change and slotted them into the gap in the window.

On the way back into town, I got a little disorientated and finally spotted a landmark I knew, the big modern looking performance space on the Malecon. This space reminds me more of the main mall in Brisbane than it does of anywhere else in Cuba. That said, Brisbane’s version doesn’t have a bunch of black flags and a digital ticker spouting out 50 year old pro-revolutionary slogans. I got a couple of photos of the well lit flags and walked along the deserted Malecon, enjoying the storm tide crashing up against the sea walls. Most of the road had been closed to traffic as there were huge waves spilling over onto the road. The sky was clear so there was no risk of rain, but the mist thrown up by the big waves was refreshing enough. I spotted a little club half full with old Cuban guys kicking back listening to a two piece band banging out a few numbers. It reminded of me of what I had liked about Cuba. Through all the overcharging and the rip offs, Cuba is at it’s heart a place of relaxed living with plenty of spare time to spend with your friends and family. It’ll be a rude shock when that whole dream of capitalism comes true. I continued walking down the Malecon until I reached the road that lead to my casa. I had about 30 minutes until my taxi was due to pick me up and I figured I’d like a sit down before doing the airport thing.

I walked past an outdoor bar which was closing up for the night (with about 5 small dogs helping), and over a street where there was some light traffic was going past. As I crossed the road some young guys called out to me “where you from?”. This is usual fare for a Havana city corner, and I replied “Japan”. I then ducked up another street, which was about 2 streets over from where I was staying. There were some people about and on the corner, a bar had been taken over by a rather exuberant looking game of dominos. I then caught sight of some cock and balls graffiti, something friends back at home were making a collection of. I stopped, turned around and walked a little way back, with two guys walking past me. As I adjusted my pack to get my camera out, I glanced at the corner I had just passed by and there was a small crowd of about 15 – 20 people there, looking in my direction. This I thought was a little odd. Then I turned to see that the two guys who had just passed me had also stopped, one about two metres from me, the other about three. They were looking at one another, so I figured they didn’t want anything to do with me, but their proximity did make me feel uneasy. Then one of them said to the other “¿aqui?” (here?), and before I knew it the guy closest to me was behind me with his arm around me neck while the other guy was busying himself with grabbing my camera. It took a little while for my brain to work out what was going on, but before I could yell or defend myself, the guy in front had got a hold of my camera and was legging it towards the Malecon, through the small crowd looking on in wonder. The guy who had a hold of me then tried to relieve me of my backpack. My brain clicked into gear and I finally worked out what was going on, and used my backpack to pull the guy from behind me to my front, where I began wrestling for control of my bag. One of the straps was still slung over my arm, so I had a good grip on it, but he kept tugging at it with all his weight. The straps gut into my hand, but I was able to pull the bag closer to me and get a better grip on it. This brought him closer and we both ended up on the ground fighting for the bag. He initially fell on me and I yelled in his ear and kicked backwards into what I think was his crotch. Then I just held my bag safe, yelling directly into his ear as loud as I could. After a bit of this, he got up to sprint off, and I tried to grab his leg but he was too quick.

Everything went quite.

Covered in mud from rolling around on the ground, I stood up and looked around for any sign of the perps. Nothing. The small crowd which had formed at the nearby corner had begun to disperse and the surrounds were returning to the usual lethargic weight found on Cuban streets. I shouted “I can’t believe this country. You all just stood there and did nothing. Fuck you all.” I was so angry with Cuba, with it’s people, with me being a tourist, with the dumb fuck running off with a camera he’d struggle to find a charger for. I walked into the dominos place, where the game had resumed, as if oblivious to the commotion outside. All I got was a couple of blank stares. I walked out into the street again, up to where it had all happened. This place was well lit, there were people about. I kept thinking to myself, “these aren’t the conditions for a mugging”. I walked up to a couple who were entering their house. I asked them to use their telephone. The guys said to me in English, “Just go home. Just go home”. I said, “I can’t”. I asked him if he saw what happened. He said “so so”. I asked if he knew who did it. He said, “maybe”. I said, “look, they can keep the camera, all I want is the lens and the card.” He gave this some thought. It looked as if he would be able to do this for me. As he was about to tell me what he could work out for me, two police cars showed up at the opposite corner to where the crowd had been. He said no. I walked up to the police, and used what Spanish I knew to get help. I pointed at the guy and his girlfriend walking away, gesturing to the police to indicate that the couple had seen it happen. I pointed to the guy walking away and said to the police “Hombre Amigo Ladron” or quite simply “that guy’s mate is the thief”. While I was led into the police car, I caught sight of the couple who saw it all get put into another car. We drove past people standing on the streets, the car would slow and the cop sitting in the front seat would turned and point at his eyes, indicating that I should carefully look these people standing in the shadows up and down. We stopped once, but the Cuban guys standing on the corner looked like any Cuban guys standing on any corner. I was in a bit of a daze and the immediate events became a little vague.

The back seat of the police car was a single piece of moulded plastic, which I thought would have been an interesting custom fit for these Ladas. No door handles or armrests though. The seat feels a bit like the chairs you sit on to play video games. I remember a night 5 years ago in Adelaide when Fish gave me a funny coloured pill and I sat down at the table top arcade machine in Mojos for an hour playing Donkey Kong, fascinated more with the lights than with the game play. I did quite well from what I can remember. A great night with a small group of close friends and a spa to help ring in the new day.

I tried to sneak a peak at my laptop, which I was sure had been smashed in the struggle, but was unable to get a good look at it. At least I still had it, smashed or not. We got to the station and the car I was in pulled up next to the car the couple had ridden in. The guy’s door was open and he was sitting inside waiting for the police to tell him what to do. I knelt down and said to him “look, I know you have to live in that neighbourhood, but you know those guys. All I want is the card and lens back. The camera is theirs. If we do this, then I can explain to the police now that you had nothing to do with it.” He said, “we’ll see” and left it at that.

As I went in to the station, I noticed my hand was bleeding around the same time I started to feel my left knee. One of the police officers pointed out that I was bleeding from the head, but was unable to direct me to a mirror or first aid kit for me to fix it. I headed to the toilet to check on my computer. Something I rarely carried with me, my computer has every photo from my trip in Cuba, apart from the ones I had taken that day. I fired it up and everything worked fine. My ID and tickets were still ok, but I had missed my taxi to the airport.

I was put into an interview room and asked to wait. My knee was hurting and my hand was bleeding a bit. The room was lit by a single fluro globe, hanging precariously from the roof by a couple of wires. The light switch consisted of a hole in the wall with two wires with hooks in the end, looped together. I played with this for a while, turning the light on and off. I got the attention of an officer and asked him in Spanish if there was a first aid kit I could use. He said they didn’t have one in the station.

Eventually they let me walk around the station. I found the couple sitting in the reception area, waiting for the police. I sat down next to the guy and began chatting.

Me: I understand your position. You know who did it but because you live in that neighbourhood, you don’t want to point the finger.. am I right?

Guy: Maybe. Do you do sport?

Me: What do you mean? I ride bikes.

Guy: No. like fighting, boxing. To defend yourself.

Me: No. Do you?

Guy: Sure.

Me: Then why didn’t you help me?

Guy: You’re a tourist.

Me: Forget that. For a minute, forget you are Cuban and that I’m Australian.

Guy: Huh?

Me: Forget it. You not Cuban, me not Australian. We are both Human. Comprende? Why didn’t you help?

This worked. Years of Catholic guilt training and I managed to get this guy where it mattered. A look of total self disgust crossed his face.

Guy: I’m sorry.

Me: Yeah. Thanks. Whatever.

The interview with the police lasted for about 40 minutes, and involved me writing the police report and royally screwing the guy who maybe didn't see anything. I kept saying: "Hombre amigos ladron", referring to the guy who had witnessed it. Fuck him. He could spend the rest of the night with the police explaining the actions of his maybe friends. When I got up to leave, the cops asked “Amigo Joshua?” I had no idea what they were on about. And they repeated their question “Amigo Joshua? Australiano” I realised they were referring to Josh, the Australian guy I had travelled with for a few days with in Eastern Cuba. “err.. Amigo Vamos Mexcio –complex hand gesture to indicate last week-”

Then they started listing off the other people I had travelled with.
“Pawel - Polanco? Collin - Canadian? You gay? Maria – Austrian. Sylbia – Swiss? Eh? You errr –complex hand gesture to indicate fornication- with Chikas?”

As they led me out, we past a guy who looked pretty fucked up. Blood running down his face and his clothes torn up, he was in a pretty bad way. I felt better about my situation because at least I wasn’t that bad. The cops pointed at him, laughed and said “he’s a gay”, as if that explained away the fact he had been savagely bashed. I managed to get a ride back to my casa with the cops and they dropped me at the door. I woke up the owner, explained in broken Spanish and charades what had happened that night and why I was so late in picking up my bags. She gave me a big hug and it was the best thing she could have done. I felt like crying. I was hurt, tired and totally over Cuba. I left my bags in the casa and went out to see about getting a taxi. It was 2:30am and I didn’t like my chances, however as if by magic a nice Peugeot taxi drove by just as I exited the building. I flagged him down, collected my bags and got in. As we drove around a few corners, the headlights fell on to a Cuban man and a woman having a struggle. The guy was pulling at her bag (or maybe her arm), and she was screaming, trying to get away. I asked the driver to stop so we could help her, but he just said “no” and kept driving.

Talk about losing faith with humanity.

I’ll write about the next 24 hours later, but they occurred with no sleep in between.

My final day in Cuba really sapped my energy and confidence for solo travel. In the last couple of days I’ve really started missing home, friends and family. Clair from Ireland sent me a Ben Fold’s video featuring Adelaide and news of Jo and Craig’s good news has lifted my spirits. Pictures of Pippa getting back into A-town has made me appreciate the good stuff we had together, and I wish her the best, regardless of the mess we made for each other last year. Violeta, the Couchsurfer I’m staying with has been awesome, so have her mates. Sara, Josh and Gus (the other travellers I’ve been hanging out with for the last week), have also been great to hang with.

I did like Cuba, and thankfully I’ve still got my laptop with the photos of the good stuff I saw to remind me that it wasn’t all shit. I hope you're liking them.

Mexico City is tops. I’m loving it. Food, culture, history, people, art – all good. While capitalism isn't the answer, Fidel's "untopia" certainly isn't. Mexico is a stark contrast to Cuba with elements of China’s ultra form of capitalism mixing it up with Latin American and Euro influnces, popping up on every Mexican city corner. Pity I don’t have my camera to capture it. Well, not until I visit Andy and Laurie in California next week where my replacement cam will be waiting for me.

RIP - Billy Thorpe

the new bean on the block

2007-02-28T21:37:00.001+01:00

I'm going to be an uncle.

Congrats Jo and Craig.

love dan

Too many CUCs spoil the broth

2007-02-28T00:43:00.001+01:00

Fresh off the plane, tourists arriving in Cuba are ripe for the picking. Jam packed with Euros, Dollars and Pounds, the initial confusion on which money plays Jesus in this country can embarrass, confuse and eventually lead you into trouble. Especially when there is two official local currencies floating about. In a tit for tat political decision back in 2003, Fidel announced that after ten years of being legal tender, the US Dollar would no longer be something people could use as money. Instead, a new currency, the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), would take the dollar’s place as the De Niero for foreigners and the Cubans more equal than others. Like the money used by Cubans, the Peso Cubano, the CUC is still not able to be bought or sold anywhere but Cuba, but is roughly indexed to the Euro. At the moment it’s equal to about 24 Peso Cubano for every 1 CUC. Both currencies are called Peso, both use the $ symbol as denominator, some of the notes and coins have a slight resemblance to each other (such as the 3 Peso Cubano coin and the 1 CUC coin), and the confusion between the two is played on by the tourist industry to fuck visitors royally.

My first night in Cuba was a learning experience and a great introduction to the economy lurking in the shadows cast by tourists.

Landing at Varadero airport at 7pm on a hot night, immigration consisted of ten large queues and small confined booths with angry looking police types stationed at each one. While chatting to them about all things Austrian, I began to read the immigration rules set out in big friendly letters. The obvious stuff was all there (valid passport, visa, plane ride out), but the final condition was to have already booked a hotel and show evidence of such a booking. Hmm. This was going to be difficult, as I had intended on grabbing a Casa Particular (a rented room within someone’s house), once I arrived. I looked over the shoulders of the Austrians at what they had written on their tourist cards. “The Ingletaria”. Sounds good. I scribbled that don on my form and continued waiting in line. Their immigration process involves you going into a small space with a dude behind a counter asking questions about your purpose for visiting the country. There is no window or open door looking out into the side of immigration which is where tourists want to be, and the only view you have is from where you came. So if you fail the test, the electric door doesn’t open, you do not pass go and you do not collect your luggage. I managed to get through the questions, the dude pressed the button and the electric door opened. I grabbed my luggage and just like back home it went through an x-ray unit just to make sure I wasn’t smuggling in any metal device used to topple governments.

My capitalistic sensibilities said to change a minimal amount of Euro into local currency at the airport and then wait until I could get to a bank to get a better exchange rate. I changed 50 Euro into Cuban Peso Convertables, the money used by tourists now the US dollar was outlawed. With a gauntlet of bus operators, taxi drivers and house owners offering their services at inflated prices to the jet lagged, I was overwhelmed by the options, but I quickly found a bus to share to Matanzas with four Greek guys who were going to Havana. The ride cost 25 CUC, and when we stopped off in Matanzas for my let out point (and a beer), the Greek guys suggested it might be easier to get accommodation in Central Havana, another 80kms away. Looking around the uninviting looking Matanzas, I decided to take them up on the idea.

More soon...

Dos Mondos

2007-02-21T20:01:00.001+01:00

Cuba is over.

What would have to be the most vigorous, eventful travel I have ever done, it is not a country for the faint hearted. Sure, you could just go there, lay on a beach and not see a thing of the country, but I burn easy and like to know a bit more about a country than just ordering drinks at a bar.

At times it was one of the most beautiful, relaxed, friendly, cheap and heart-warming countries I’ve ever visited. Other times it was the complete opposite. The gap between the rich and poor.. Sorry Fidel.. the equal and the more equal, is astonishing. In the rural towns where tourists rarely visit, the Fidel brand of communism seems to work. People are happy. They don’t have the constant reminder of the outside world giving them the perception that if only they could buy stuff then they would be free. For the majority of tourists, the Cuba they interact with is a façade, a sham, a romantic ideal. The old cars, the music, the cigars, the rum and Cuba Libre come at the cost of choking fumes, culture whoring, lung cancer, blindness and lethargy.

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A little housekeeping.

As the internet in Cuba was difficult to access, I will be putting up my photos and blog entries along side fresh stuff about current adventures in Mexico.
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Godspeed
20 February 2007

Did you know that two people flying on a return plane trip from Europe to America produce the same amount of carbon emissions as an average western household does in an entire year? Wrap your middle class guilt around that one ladies and germs.

I think I just used up all my bike riding credits getting here.

I took a flight at the butt crack of dawn from Dublin to Frankfurt (that was a fun jog with full pack to the airport bus, which stayed parked for another 15 minutes), stayed with a German couple who rode bikes from Mexico to the southern most tip of Argentina over the course of a year. Shit. A new challenge. I took the opportunity to look around the central part of the city, which I had seen 8 months earlier. Interesting to see the difference the World Cup made to town. No colossal TV screen floating in the river, no swarms of people wearing their country’s colours, no massive edifices erected in honour of buck toothed ball warriors. A normal little German city. The hunt continued for the out of print Cycling Cuba, a Lonely Planet guide book which I’ve bought for two friends previously in an effort to encourage them to do something stupid with me. Evidently it didn’t work and now I was headed to Cuba on a solo mission. The closest I got to a book about cycling Cuba was a German language book called Radfarren ein Kuba, but that would be as much help to me as a fart in a bath. I gave up searching for the book and enjoyed a meal at an organic vegetarian place I had discovered last time I was there. I had heard it was best to bring Euro in small denominations to Cuba, and while buying a bigger memory card for my MP3 player I got some change. It was only after I got back to where I was staying that I realised the girl at the check out had given me 70 Euro too much. I seem to be having a bit of luck with free money of late. In Dublin, a bank exchanged 25 Pounds for Euro as if it was 40 Pounds and in London, I found 20 Pounds on Camden Road, but then blew it on a ridiculously long scarf (jelly baby?).

I got back to the flat and my host’s had cooked up a fantastic dinner. The following day was all about getting to the airport and flying to Cuba. At the airport, I got to the check in desk and they told me I should present them with an actual ticket. Having done it all online I had no such thing and had to go check my email to grab booking numbers and reservation codes. My headphones finally gave up the ghost and I bought a fresh pair in Duty Free. Not sure exactly how Duty Free works these days. From what I remember, things are supposed to be cheaper than they are elsewhere, but when buying anything at an airport I get the same feeling as when I go to buy a chocolate bar at a cinema. I passed several book shops all offering multiple, shiny copies of the Cuba Lonely Planet, but I had it in my mind that I would just grab Annick’s copy when she left and return it when I got back to Ireland.

The flight was fairly uneventful. Looking like human skin under a microscope, the clouds over the Atlantic were quite impressive. Chasing the sunset reminded of me of Russia and Finland, with dusk lasting a couple of hours. Looking out the window, I confused a bunch of clouds for the coast of Florida, but the orange glow of the sun reflecting off of the sea looked amazing. Just as the sun began to disappear, the lights of Miami, 200km away, began to illuminate the clouds. I tuned my radio into a few US radio station, all but one of them spouting something about Jesus. Coming into land, the long peninsular of Varadero, chock full of hotels and big spending tourists came into view. By all reports, this is not the place to go if you are a budget traveller, and here I was flying into the local airport.

We land and my month in Cuba begins.

In the beginning…

2007-01-31T21:58:00.000+01:00

…there was Guinness

Shortly afterwards there was Cuba.

Back tracking the steps and decisions involved in arriving at the place you’re currently sitting is an interesting exercise. Give it a shot. What got you to this moment in time where you are currently sitting here and reading this? Here’s one: how do we know each other? What course did your life follow for us to know one another? Weird one.

Having arrived in Ireland with no further plans, the bus trip from the airport (talking to the Polish midget about her after dinner habits), I felt a little empty and lost. The three different plans pulling me to Dublin (one made in a Munich beer hall, another over email with distant relatives and the last with a girl in a galaxy far, far away), had fought it out and left no survivors. Frankenbike had been given away, the New Year had arrived and life felt like an interrupted conversation. In times like these, I tend to make rash, impulsive and sometime irrational decisions. This is the sort of thing I sometime hope I’ll never lose but other times hope will mellow with age.

I got off the bus from the airport, hunted down the pub where I was meeting Clair (a person that if you didn’t get on with her, it would be your fault), sat down and was promptly presented with a Guinness. As I was drinking it, I felt pretty chuffed with myself having only arrived in Ireland an hour earlier and already I was drinking a pint of the black stuff. We laughed with one her work mates how our chance meeting on a train from Salzburg to Munich 5 months earlier had turned into me staying with Clair and her flat mate in central Dublin. On the second pint, Clair’s other work mate Annick turned up. Having just given her notice to the company, her plans (and energy), to see parts of the world I’d yet to see before re-birthing as a lawyer rekindled my wanderlust. After a couple of drinks, her ability to talk the leg off an amputee and a sense of humour to enter them in an arse kicking competition afterwards, Annick and I got on pretty well from the get go. Then she popped the question:

“Why don’t you meet me in Cuba?”

“Yeah alright”

Having said this in a half joking manner, in the following days, I began to consider my options. My finances were ok. My diary was clear. Ireland was cold and wet. The idea was growing on me. I looked at the cost of flights and researched the country. The humour was melting away. Before I knew it my flights were booked and my visa was sorted.

We are serious now.

I’m going to Cuba.

Fuck.

From a beer hall night to a long haul flight.

¿new cuban?

2007-01-30T00:20:00.001+01:00

I´m in Cuba.

Came as a surprise to me too.

the internet (and the state sanctioned computers it runs on), is dead slow, expensive and prevents reliable and consistent means of contact with the outside world. But hey, who said anything about thought police?

Hey... Outside world... What´s going on with Fidel?

I´ve seen Havana, Vinales, Remidios and now I´m in Santa Clara. In a couple of days I´ll head down to Trinidad and then keep heading east until I hit Guantanamo (no, not the naval base).

Photos and video are looking great. Will upload when I get the chance.

Check 1..2.. 2..2..1...2

2007-01-27T00:58:00.001+01:00

is this thing on?

Sorry for the lack of blogging. The internet here is not so good. So rather than my usual rants and raves, I present to you photos from Cuba.

Full wrap up in about three weeks.

dirty old town

2007-01-16T23:25:00.000+01:00

I now have a bike. Frank, the kind, all seeing, all knowing mechanic up the street from where I'm staying has loaned me a 50 year old bike, which has been sitting in a shed unused for about 15 years. It is fairly similar to the Swiss Army bikes banging about Europe around World War II and weighs a tonne. Frank said he thought it wasn't as cool as most modern bikes (I hear functional breaks are in this season), but I said it was perfect. This means I get to see a whole lot more Dublin in a smaller time frame. Now, if i can avoid getting the tyres stuck in the wet tram tracks again (like I did today), which almost resulted in total sterility and loss of teeth.

A port city, Dublin's docklands remind me a bit of what Port Adelaide has so desperately wanted to be for the last 15 years, but never got around to being. There's a lot of gentrification going on, with new buildings engulfing the grotty dirty areas, replacing the boons with glass walled apartment buildings and deserted frappuccino cafes. There is a part that reminded me a bit of Helsinki, but other than the red bricks and a copper green roof, the building and surrounding area is completely different. Little pockets of filth, old brick warehouses and caravan toting warfies still loiter here and there to remind visitors that it probably wasn't a good place to walk around 5 years ago. It's as if a bunch of people decided to have a big money fight, throwing cash around rather than glassing one another, sprucing up the joint and takling Dublin's housing shortage in the process.

In a back area of the docks, I rode by a caravan to take this photo. As I passed it, a gust of wind flung its door open. I didn't think much of it, but when I pulled up about 5 metres from the van, its pikey inhabitant came out and started saying something, which I initially took as a serving about the door. However, after a series of hand gestures and a couple of discernible words, I worked out he was only giving me directions and not the serving I had assumed i was getting. It such a weird feeling to see the contradiction at play with this guy. Here he was, in a dirty old caravan with missing teeth and limited life prospects, parked next to U2's dockland development. All power to Bongo for poncing around the world getting honorary knighthoods and meeting Peter Costello, drawing attention to whatever worthy cause he's adopted this week. But fuck mate, try throwing some of those tax free Euros at the issues that are quite literally at your own doorstep for a change.

Apart from the Messiah status bestowed upon U2 ( I do like them, but sweet jezis they're a pop band), I'm really enjoying Dublin. I've had the umbilical of Australian familiarity found in London cut and I'm back to travelling. Sort of. I'm staying with Al and Clair, two Irish girls who work for a fancy media company here in Dublin. Their place is pretty much around the corner from the central bit of town and they have been cool people to hang out and stay with. Through them I've met a variety of great people, some of which have encouraged the more impulsive side of my character. I've also had the ability to mix it up with the locals a bit more. Speaking the language has certainly made this place, with the ability of striking up a conversation with anyone a big plus. A constant source of amusement has been the "so when did Shane MacGowan pass out at the gig you saw" conversation, with most people having a story. And if you were wondering, it was about 25 minutes from the end and the band kept playing as if nothing had happened.

I'm currently hunting for a book which I have bought twice, giving it to other people. Now that I stand on the edge of actually doing what the book talks about myself, it's out of print and I can't get it anywhere. Arse. Today, I walked into a bookshop and quickly drew a blank on the book search. However, through the magic of a common language, I talked books, travel and life in Ireland with the Oshima-esq Sydney-sider sales assistant, who, between smoking, serving customers and wearing black recommended a good pub (I was there with Gabriel Byrne the other night and they still don't serve Guinness) and an even better bookshop (And you thought this joint was the land ISBN forgot).

At the other bookshop (still no book), I chatted to the guy about bikes and travel for about 20 minutes. He told me about his Irish riding adventures during the 70s and about a mate of his who had been skittled by a semi-trailer in London recently. She had been messed up pretty badly and died at the scene, nasty stuff and he was still upset about it. When I asked him if she enjoyed riding her bike, he said she loved it and she had always riden a bike for as long as they knew each other. I reassured him that she died doing what she loved and thet he shouldn't feel too down about it. As I was saying this, I realised that if I was ever killed while riding a bike, I would want people to think of me in that way.

Listening to a lot of Godspeed You Black Emperor!. A band listed as "post-rock" on the genre chart, they feature epic 20 mintue long songs perfect for chilling out at home on a cold night. Tomorrow I head down to Kilkenny to meet Marie, a distant relative on my mum's side. I haven't quite worked out the link yet.. Maybe mum (or even Marie) can leave a comment spelling out the connection.

I forgot to mention in the last post about how the Polish midget I met on the airport bus mixed up her words a few times, saying how she enjoyed having an "Irish whiskey and cock" after dinner on a cold night. I tried to tell her that any stiff drink after a meal was good for digestion, but couldn't becasue I was too busy giggling like a school girl.

The Vikings, the gay bar and the flying nun.

2007-01-12T15:35:00.000+01:00

On the flight over from London, I sat next to a Polish midget and an Irish nun. When I said hello, the midget grunted at me and the nun saw this as an invite to keep talking to me throughout the flight. She was a lovely old duck who explained to me that this was only her second flight in her life and she didn’t like flying at all. As the engines roared just before taking off, she crossed her self and gripped the arm rests. What was weird was when the refreshment trolley came past, the nun pulled a mafia sized wad of cash out of a ratty old envelope and bought some salt and vinegar Pringles (which she shared with me). After we landed she crossed herself again, thanked me for talking to her during the flight and after saying our goodbyes she said “God Bless you Daniel”. Not being religious, I knew what this meant to her and took it as a compliment.

In the non-EU line up for immigration I got chatting to an Icelandic lass. According to her, Iceland was founded by Vikings and Irish monks about 800 years ago and that she was in Ireland researching her family's ancient history. Is this Viking/monk thing true? How is this possible?

When I got onto the bus to go into town, the grunty Polish midget was on there sitting next to the only vacant seat, so I sat next to her and started chatting. Not being that much of a conversationalist she didn’t say much, opting rather to make noises which sounded halfway between a giggle and a cackle. What an all-round odd person. The fogged up windows, unfamiliar territory and a grunty giggly cackly midget made for a rather disorientating bus ride into the town centre. I found myself to a phone and called my Irish mate Clair’s mobile number. I tried four times with no luck. A little unsure of what to do, I decided to ask at a nearby police station. They dialled the same number on their phone and it worked fine. I met Clair at The Ginger Man, a little pub just around the corner from her work. She was with Rob, a mate of hers from work. I was told to unload the pack, sit down and have a pint of Guinness. 47 minutes from arriving in Ireland to having my first pint of Guinness in a Dublin pub. Not bad.

Since then I’ve been spending the days wandering around sections of central Dublin. The weather while shitty at night, has been clear and crisp during the day. I’ve seen plenty of the centre part of Dublin, but without a bike my speed, flexibility and distance is limited. The parks are beautiful and the rows of houses look completely different to those in London did. And I have no idea what Bono was on about. All the streets here are clearly marked and easy to find.

The other night I joined Rob and Clair on a tour of the Guinness Storehouse. After a “do you think we’ll make it by five” cab ride, we got there just as they were shutting admissions. This did mean we got the place pretty much to ourselves and while a bit hokey and tourist like, it was cool to find out about how the beer was made in ye olde days and that the head brewer had signed a 9000(!) year lease with Dublin authorities. The advertising through history display was cool and the “we all have choices/how do I avoid hangovers” responsible drinking exhibit was a cack. Rob was convinced the complimentary pint of Guinness tasted better at the brewery than it did at the pub afterwards, but I thought otherwise. The one at the bar had a stronger malty taste, something I look for in a beer.

Last night Clair and I met up with her mate Kevin. We went for kebabs, had a couple of drinks at a fancy pants bar, then headed to The George, one of Dublin’s gay joints. I think some guy was having a go at chatting me up, Kevin corrected Clair’s assumption that there were more girls in the bar on the night (“are you sure you not confusing that group of twinks over there for ladies?”), and when I said that I felt a little out of place to one of the girls in the group she said: “Why? Because you’re straight?” I replied “Nah.. Because I’m Australian”.

Lexicon additions:

Arsehole-a-fied
Drunk. The severity of drunkenness is implied by the accentuation of each segment of the word (ex: – I was so Arse….HOLE…A.. FIIIEDD last night when I got home and threw up on the carpet)

Gob Shite
Either the crap someone talks and/or the person who talks it.

Craic
A good time. Also, a generic identifier (ex: With all that craic and the like)

News in short:
My video camera is broken. I can film things, but can’t get stuff on OR off of the camera. Arse. ANZ are a bag of dicks who require several late night phone calls to help them clean up their mess. Long story which involves sending my replacement card to the wrong address, cancelling it and then closing my account becasue my automatic payments began bouncing after they changed the account number. For someone I randomly met on a train in Austria, Clair is turning out to be one of those instant yet fantastic friends you only meet a few times in your life.

There’s an interesting adventure on the horizon. More deets as they come to hand.

where the bloody hell are you?

2007-01-10T02:32:00.001+01:00

I had mixed feelings about London, but overall it was a brill (ha.. local speak), experience. The city is so huge, yet through place names and architecture, so familiar. Bike riding around helped see more of the layout than I would have in a Tube (though that was fun). Props to Matt and Melissa for lending me a bike and letting me crash xmas while I was in town

Meeting up with an ex-girlfriend went better than expected. This is super ancient history, but every time we interacted after we stopped seeing each other in 2002 involved tears, awkward 3am SMS and uncomfortable silences. Our last gauche meeting 18 months ago (a few months before she left for her first big world trip), I suggested travel would make these emotions seem insignificant and trivial. I had many reservations about meeting up with her, but as she is quite a kind person, I decided to give it a shot. Once we met up and I stayed a few nights with her and her flat mates, my theory proved true and things seem to have settled without the weirdness. I think by the next time we meet, we'll be on the way to a normal friendship.

Staying with Simon and Alex was fab. Although I spent more time with Simon, these guys were the only Brits I interacted at length with. Great guys to meet and hang out with - talking music, travel and life over a few beers. It also gave me a chance to see south London, spend plenty of time around Battersea and catch up on last year’s Doctor Who. Browsing their extensive music collection didn’t hurt either. Bill Drummond is a genius.

Oh.. and now I’m in Dublin

SW17

2007-01-03T21:07:00.001+01:00

Cripes.. I have butterflies about this year. I have had such a good couple of weeks, the dark chasm of unknown which is 2007 excites me rather than phases me - for the time being at least.

At first, I didn't think much of it, but now I'm starting to get London. It has taken a little while to warm to it, but I think after a few more visits it'll be somewhere where I really like.

Today I rode about 15 miles from Camden to Balham and visited a whole bunch of places in between, listening to the Beatles love album, INXS kicks and the Bladerunner soundtrack. I saw Harrods (the outside), the British Museum (which holds the loot from several centuries of ransacking other countries), and the Australian War memorial (a very nice tribute to England killing off our grandads). As I crossed the Thames in the dark, I saw off in the distance the Battersea Power Station, probably my favourite building in the world and will be checking it out over the coming days.

The coolest part about being is England is that I can pull up on a street somewhere or go into a shop and strike up an interesting conversation with anyone, without the need to use crazy hand gestures or convoluted charades to establish basic principles.

I think I've solved the issues I was having with my computer, but everyone keep their voodoo dolls at the ready in case it has a relapse.

I'm now staying down South for a couple of days so I can get an idea of southern London. I wonder if I'll meet a Womble?

popped

2007-01-02T13:55:00.001+01:00

NYE was nice and quite. When the fireworks around Big Ben went off on the telly, I did get the feeling that it would have been nice to be there. But playing pictionary with family was still pretty good.

Here's the video we took while Henge Hunting - which doesn't appear to be working properly..

In sickness and in heath

2006-12-31T10:20:00.000+01:00

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

In other news, my Trabant video won me some loot.

Happy New Year

diagrams & equations

2006-12-27T15:44:00.001+01:00

On Xmas eve, Jo and I called mum. It was nice to talk to our mummy bear.

I canned my plans for early morning photos at Piccadilly Circus on xmas day. This was mostly due to me not finding the place that interesting (where are the clowns, elephants and trapeze?), but laziness and respect for sleep did play a part. We had a breakfast of bacon and scrambled eggs. The bacon here in England is really juicy and meaty, with bugger all fat.

I played the Christmas Fairy, distributing the gifts from under the tree to their new owners seated around the lounge. No surprises that bub (being her first xmas), received the most presents. I cleaned up, with a fresh supply of bonds undies from Jo & Craig topping the list. Mum gave me a year's subscription to Flickr (my first virtual gift), which was a great choice. While the whole idea of christmas irks me, I still like getting loot. I spent the afternoon reading, counting the indigestion formula commercials on telly - 34. Matt got an Xbox 360 and Gears of War, which we played a co-op mission until 5:30am Boxing day. After sleeping a few hours, Jo, Craig and I went exploring around the Regent street sales. Craig bought some Vans and Jo bought a pair of jeans. At Muji I bought a new notepad, and at Uni Qlo I bought some socks. I am a Japanese brand whore.

Last night I had a dream that someone with the first name of Jean had released a book detailing the crazy ideas of Luke Toop. Every page explored a different Toop idea through diagrams, mathematical equations and shaded in squares of graph paper. Weird.

the loot tree

2006-12-25T00:01:00.001+01:00

Last night I ended up hanging out with Phil, a bloke from Adelaide who works here in London as an Accountant. We rode down to Westminster and near Downing street and had an entertaining conversation with a copper with a rather large gun.

Today, on the way back to where I'm spending xmas day, I saw the weirdest thing I've seen in London so far. I was riding along Seven Sisters Road towards Tottenham at about 8:30pm, there were a few cars on the road, but it wasn't busy. Coasting down a hill, I see a guy about 200 metres ahead run out from behind a fence, press the button on a pedestrian crossing and then run back behind the fence. The lights change and the traffic next to me begins to slow down. As I go to get onto the footpath, a white dog runs out from where the guy was, stops in the middle of the road and drops a big poo in front of the stopped traffic. After he finished, he ran back to the spot behind the fence, leaving his fresh package laying in front of the cars, with their lights catching on the steam. My question is how does a person train their dog to do this?

Merry non-religious day together with friends and family, where you swap gifts wrapped in paper decorated with snowmen. And a Happy New Year.

I hope this video puts you in the same calm mood it put me in.

It's been a funny old year.

James Brown is dead..
Total chaos, man it's resurrected

don't believe your reviews - good or bad

2006-12-21T22:35:00.001+01:00

Went to the football the other night with Marina, a lass I know from Adelaide. The free seats we got were pretty crap, but at 30 Pound for a regular ticket, I was happy with what I was given. During half time, I went to have a closer look at the pitch, with my cohort joining me after a bit. There we were standing at the edge of the pitch appreciating our new found proximity to the action, when people started flooding back into their seats and the players returned to the field. However, rather than returning to our seats in a galaxy far, far away, we followed the crowd into the more exclusive area where we found a couple of empty seats close to pitch and enjoyed the second half from there.

Afterwards, we went to a little pub in what looked to be a ritzy bit of town. The girl behind the bar was really friendly, saying they had just taken on the business two weeks earlier and that she liked Aussies. We got there about 5 minutes before the end of service and ended up seated at a table with a few of the locals and joined n on the conversation. A rather pissed 40 something guy arced up once he found out we were Australians.

Pissed guy: You fucks come ere on ya 2 year visas, take all the fucking jobs and think you fucking own the joint. Pack of maggots you fucking Australian cunts are.
Me: err.. I'm only here for three weeks, and then I'm off to Ireland.
Pissed guy: Three weeks? How the fuck are you supposed to see anything? Disrespectful cunt.

Can't win, can I?

A bit later, his mate (who really enjoyed the price of steak in Australia but not much else), reminded the pissed guy that he was Scottish and should mind his Ps and Qs. Not wanting to perpetuate the hostilities, I avoided the "My last name is Murphy and I'll be visiting family in Ireland" conversation with these UK lads.

I've been a little spoiled in Austria, Slovakia and Hungary where being an Australian is still a bit of a novelty. "Hey everyone, this guy's from Australian", "Whoa.. Australia.. Kangaroo, Cool". But in this London bar, I felt a bit weird getting an earful about being from Australian. True, they (we), are everywhere in London, but as I pointed out to the twat hurling abuse at me, the same goes for UK travellers in Australia. He had caught me by surprise and taking the bait, I allowed myself to get agitated by what could be at worst described as a bit of drunken shit stirring. Just today, I counted six Australians, plus a group of five Commonwealth Bank cash card toting girls in front of me in the ATM cue, complaining about health issues while bragging about their drinking accomplishments. No novelty there.

The fog here in London is crazy. Yesterday wasn't too bad, but today I couldn't see more than about 400 metres on street level, with the view out of my fifth storey window limited to the side of the neighbouring building. Jo and Craig's plane back from Paris last night was cancelled and BA put them up in a hotel for the evening, flying them out of France at the Butt Crack of 4am this morning. Today, we met up for lunch at Camden Markets and wandered around the shops until we froze. I found 20 Pounds on the footpath, which I used to buy a rather spiffy scarf with. I can't remember the last time I had a scarf (if at all), but it is a welcome addition to my wardrobe / backpack.

vintage tees

2006-12-17T21:32:00.001+01:00

Saturday I was on a mission. Matt and Melissa needed to get a car, but couldn't fit in actually buying one between their new baby and working. I volunteered to go to the mechanics, check it out, buy it and drive it back. I rode from their house in Tottenham all the way to the garage in Harrow, about 30km through suburbs, parks and back streets. It was a beautiful, but chilly day and I got to see Finsbury Park, Hampstead Heath, Wembley Stadium and a whole bunch of little places I've heard mentioned on the telly, but never really imagined I'd ever see. Suburb, street, shop and last names which all have different uses back at home. It took almost 3 hours and was a good way to see the northern parts of London.

While waiting for my own Arthur Daley to rock up and take the cash for the car ("I'll be there in 20, I'm just down at the pub and want to finish me pint first"), I sat down and struck up a conversation with Kevin, the 5 year old son of one of the two mechanics. Kevin had just started school, he was hungry and he liked watching his dad fix cars. His dad and his colleague had spentthe better part of the day replacing the "moh-a" on a Rover hatchback, which some "dozy geezer" had blown on the M1, but was paying a packet to get it fixed by 5:30pm. While attaching the final tubes and the finish touches on the engine swap over were being executed, the car sales guy turned up just as the two guys who owned the car did, forming a small audience around the front of the car. Kevin started making little groans and grabbed at his mid section. I asked if he needed to go to the loo, and he said yep. It was at that moment a fire broke out in the engine bay of the Rover. The mechanic under the bonnet starts yelling, "BLOWER.. Get a fuckin blower", as he was blowing at the fire like a 10 year old kid trying to put out the candles on their 76 year old grandfather's birthday cake. Kevin tugs at my sleeve, I look down and see his face, twisted into a tormented expression looking back up at me, with a small yellow puddle forming at his feet. The other mechanic races over with an extinguisher, puts out the flames and then leads Kevin away to the loo while his dad explains the mess to the car's owner. I was waiting for Jeremy Beadle to pop out of from behind the door and say, "'e wasn't expecting that, was 'e?".

On the drive home, I navigated my way across London in about an hour, only missing two turns and surprisingly not seeing any of the expected nightmare traffic. With the roads clear, the scenery new but vaguely familiar and the radio on, I remembered what I like about driving. I'm amazed at what you can get for 500 Quid. A 1996 Ford Mondeo with 52,000 miles on the clock. An idea is stirring. Nah.. Too much hassle.

Today I went to the Camden Markets. It's not just one little back street car park with trestle tables and a handful of hippies selling Nepalese beanies. It's an entire suburb with old factories and mills gutted, filled with stalls, lights, cafes, vintage shops, jewelers and a whole lot of hippies selling Nepalese beanies. It'll take a few visits to see it all, but I might wait until Jo and Craig get back from Paris.

I got free tickets to the Football tomorrow night. Fulham vs Middleborough. Nice one Bruvva.

city limits

2006-12-16T12:06:00.001+01:00

London

Big place. Rode a bike I borrowed from Melissa (Craig's sister), to the centre and then around the some of the more famous bits. Surprisingly I felt pretty safe on the roads, but it has been weird swapping back to the left hand side, and I think I pissed a few drivers off with my occasional hesitation.

Big Ben really isn't that big and Westminster seems tiny after Budapest's Parliament. But it's still fairly impressive. The Eye looks cool, but at 20 pound a shot and an hour long wait, I decided against it. I accidentally on purpose found my way onto a guided tour of The Globe, where I got to see where the great unwashed stood. I spent an hour or so riding around the Thames, checking out a few of the little back alleys and side streets. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon at the Tate Modern (having a little unexpected nap on the couches), which I reckon I'll be returning to a few times while I'm here. There's plenty I didn't get a chance to look at, and besides, I've still got to have a turn on the slides.

As expected, prices are at the least double of what they are in Australia, and in some cases four times the price. However, after spending three months in Hungary, where everything is half to a third of the price, the equilibrium of financial karma is catching up.

The weather is scarily beautiful. It's cool but not cold and today there are blue skies and bright sunshine. A nice day to go to the Camden Markets.

Proper foreigners

2006-12-14T22:32:00.000+01:00

I realised on Tuesday afternoon that my flight from Bratislava to London was on Thursday.. not Friday. This meant one less day with the guys in Vienna, no going away dinner and no drunken late night conversations. The upside to this was I would see Jo and Craig a week early, as they are due to jet off to Paris for 5 days on Friday, the same day I thought I was meant to arrive. I figured this might make for a good surprise and thankfully it did. I met Craig's sister Melissa, her husband Matt and their new, smiley baby Alexis. It all paned out really well and it's so great to see my sister again after 9 months. Family reunion in isle 5. But as most things that seem to happen on this trip, it's not the destination where the story is, it's the journey.

On the email from Ryanair:

Do not wrap any presents that you are carrying in hand baggage as the wrapping will be removed at security. Merry Christmas from all of us here in Ryanair.

Merry Christmas indeed. Very Un-Australian.

Freshly equipped with my missing day, I did more things in Vienna in one day than I did in three while I was there last time. I bought gifts, had lunch with friends, went to galleries, explored streets and back alleys I missed the first couple of times. Basically I spent an entire day riding around on my bike, saying goodbye to it in the best way possible. Using a borrowed camera, I took more photos of the town I had thought I had already captured and found cool shops I had somehow overlooked last time. I got a bit emotional when I said goodbye, but knew that I would always welcome back to Hirschengasse. I donated Frankenbike to the household, so he wouldn't just be left in some shed gathering dust. Then I grabbed a train to Bratislava and stayed with Radovan again. In the morning I followed a backhanded route to the airport (take the free Ikea bus to the shopping centre, then take the number 61 - which is usually too full for a conductor to operate - to the airport). I gave myself plenty of time and apart from the fully loaded run from Ikea to the 61, my journey to the airport, check in and boarding was all performed with the serenity of a Hindu cow. Taking off in thick fog was cool, because as we got above it, the low cloud carpeted the ground, breaking on the hills around Bratislava like water lapping at the banks of a lake. The flight was uneventful, with Ryanair cutting costs everywhere (some overheard conversations: you mean I have to give back my in flight magazine? Stansted is how far from London? Why is only one toilet working?). As I've had a bit of a stomach ache on and off over the last few days, my only concern was Where's the vomit bag/cheap film processing packet? Too bad if I ever wanted to do both. I wonder if anyone has posted vomit to the film company before..

Arriving in the UK was weird. Signs in English. Only English. I could understand all the announcements. I was able to eavesdrop. The amount of useless information we are presented with in day to day life is only highlighted in the first couple of hours of when you arrive back in familiar territory. But like being confronted with ear splitting rush hour city traffic after a weekend in the country, eventually it all becomes common place background noise. It's been 9 months since I was in an English speaking country. Sure, nearly every young person in Europe speaks English, but the world around them is always in their mother tongue, not mine.

After walking through the labyrinth of Stansted, I finally find my way to immigration. About 200 people are standing ahead of me and they're not moving very fast. Arse. I then notice the 3 different lines: UK citizens, EU citizens and ALL OTHERS. I walk over to the ALL OTHERS line, and there is only two people ahead of me. I walk past the huge queue as if in the VIP line of a nightclub. I felt a bit like royalty or some fancy pants celebrity. I had a big grin on my face and started to whistle Rule Britannia, singing the '6 Chinese crackers up your arse' bit quietly to myself. I get to the big yellow line you stand behind when waiting for the next person to get their passport stamped, a guy hands me a little form and I go fill it in. I then come back and start chatting with him.

me: Ahh.. It's so easy being back in an English speaking country. It's a big relief just to be able to read the signs.
guy: yeah?
me: yeah.. I haven't been in one for about 9 months. and this is my first time in the UK.
guy: Really? you staying in London long?
me: About three weeks. I've heard so much about it and I'm curious what all the fuss is about.
guy: you gotta keep an eye on your wallet though.
me: yeah, I heard the UK was kind of expensive.
guy: nah. Lots of foreigners.
me: (looking at my passport and the guy) What? Like me? I'm a foreigner.
guy: (waving a hand at me as if to say "don't be silly") No. You know.. Proper foreigners.
me: Oh.. you mean the ones that take all the jobs and marry all the women? yeah.. big problem that.
guy: can't trust any of them.. and with this EU thing, so many different people coming and setting up shop here. I dunno.
me: Kind of like reverse colonialism.
guy: erh?
me: All these places occupied or attacked by the British way back when, finally coming back to the "mother land". (exaggerated quotation gesture)
guy: not sure about that. 'ere, mind ya way.

..and he waved me through.

Welcome to the United Kingdom.

In the Nothing to Declare section, there was no one to not declare anything to. I peered around the corner into the Declare section, and again there was no one there either. Later, to prove to myself how open minded I am, I asked a young Muslim woman for directions." 'ang a right at the next lights, then a left and then up a bit 'til you get to the brightly coloured offie and then take a right'. But it wasn't her mouth of marbles British accent which caught me off guard, it was her Calvin Klein branded Hajib which made me double take. No assimilation my arse.

After hanging out with Jo and Craig for a few hours, the last 10 months seems like a dream. While I like to blab about the cool things which are happening to me on this blog, in person I'm fairly reserved about it, holding back on the 'when I was there' stories. I remember around the time I was beginning to think quitting high school to work was a bad idea, I started meeting people who had just returned from their gap year holidays. Their stories of European adventures told with Cockney accents picked up in the transfer lounge at Heathrow really shitted me. I always got jealous, but it wasn't what they told it was how they told it. This lead to me making a promise to myself that if I ever got the chance to travel, I would try not to be a precocious wanker about it when I got back. But if I ever bail you up and start dribbling shit about killing pigs, riding bikes and getting arrested, Andy, the American guy I met in Budapest, felt the way I want everyone who hears/reads my travel stories to feel:

"I'm not jealous. I'm inspired"

Go see the world.

Get off your arse and open your mind. Even if you can only do a bit, see something different to your little world. And if you can't travel, make a friends with someone from another country. Eat something you've never heard of. Catch a random bus somewhere in your town. Talk with someone standing next to you in the bank. Geeze I sound like one of those cheesey life coaches.

I haven't explored the city yet. That's tomorrow.