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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.

Where I travelled in 540 days

Japan China Mongolia Russia Finland Germany

Austria Czech Hungary Slovakia England

Ireland Cuba Mexico USA Sweden Spain

Andorra France Italy Switzerland

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 Murphy
www.mandurphy.net

The 3 Canadians

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

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

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

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.