Scandinavia… tilting to the left

SO… 4 nights in Copenhagen and 2 and a half nights through my time in Stockholm, and you’d think I’d have more to say… I’ve realized a few things though, which I shall obviously share with you, because that’s why you’re here.

I am sick to death of churches, museums, galleries, exhibitions, and anything of the type. In the end they really are all the same. With the exception of specific things like the Vasa museum in Stockholm that I went to today that has an enormous ship that they pulled out of the water almost intact after nearly 350 years. That was okay. But still…I would have preferred not having to pay for it.

As much as I hate admitting it – I do like having company. The last 2 cities I’ve been in I’ve not had the easy meeting of English speaking fellow travelers that I have had in previous places… and I’ve felt myself withdrawing more into my own little world… but then pouncing, often uncomfortably, on the nearest English speaking person that I hear say something remotely interesting. The last 2 days in Stockholm I’ve walked for at least 6 hours each day… and apart from taking a ridiculous amount of photos and getting very tired and going to bed early and getting a good nights sleep every night… all I’ve done is worn down the soles of my shoes.

And realized that when taking photos… its ALL ABOUT THE LIGHT. Stockholm is such a grey city during the day (or it has been so far) that I’m actually getting better photos here at night time, because at least I KNOW there’s no light… and I can use the flash or one of the more complicated (in a way that I know what it does and why, but not necessarily HOW) night time settings… but a grey overcast sky is just shit.

Spanish people annoy the crap out of me… how smart do you have to be to know that whispering at 3.30 in the morning is no less likely to wake people up than turning all the lights on and banging pots and pans… it has the same effect… it makes me want to destroy Spain… I’m sure there are SOME nice ones around… but… whatever… I’m just aggravated because they’ve woken me up the last 3 nights running… and some other stuff that I won’t go into…

You Can get used to everything being tilted about 5 degrees off centre… it took me about half a day, but I can now sit at the table without fear of everything sliding off into the ocean… its an odd feeling… I don’t know how long I could put up with it for, but suffice to say that I do enjoy being on land, and appreciate it even more after living on a boat for a few days…

Funny how when you try to do something after putting it off for fear that you’ll stuff it up, that you actually find it easier than you thought… I’ve found that a lot recently… and I’m hoping it follows through for University…

Books are heavy.

I’m going to have to wear about 5 layers of clothes tomorrow when I catch the plane to stop myself getting charged the ridiculous over weight fee.

Citrus fruit seem to be especially good up here… even though they still appear to be imported from the same places we get ours from…

I think the bread rolls I got to make sandwiches with are meant to be eaten toasted… they’re strange.

There’s only 5 days until I’m back at home and I’m still not sure how I feel about it… I’m almost more nervous about going home than I was before I left to come overseas… I wonder why that is…

Fear of the Known…

I’ve now been further north than I’ve ever been before… I walked as far north in Stockholm as I could be bothered… basically until I didn’t see anything in the distance that I wanted to take a photo of…

Did you know you can dry preserve, in the manner of apricots that we’ve all had… Oranges? The supermarket I went to the other day had a dried fruit section – and amongst the normal things like apricots, pineapple, guava, mango, and pawpaw, was Orange, Strawberry and Kiwifruit… fantastic…

Other than that… I think I just have to reiterate (I’m sure I’ve said it before) that unless you know someone in a city like this… it’s really what you make it. And if you don’t have a good time, then its no-one’s fault but your own…

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
- GK Chesterton

Coming back down to earth in Krakow

Poland… I never really though about including Poland in my itinerary until, when asked by a Polish person if I was going, and replying with a firm “No”... I received a death stare that quickly changed my mind “Oh, well... I mean… I just don’t have time… I mean… I haven’t really thought about it… um… I mean… where would you suggest that I go?”. “Krakow” was the resounding answer that I received then, and from all of the Poles questioned from that point onwards… So Krakow was added to my list… another country, another badge, another hostel…

My first impression of Krakow was obscured by an American style shopping mall. I think Obscured is the right word… I mean… You shouldn’t blame the town planner for thinking that the first thing that a tourist would want to see when arriving from a western country to a post-communist country, would be an enormous mall… and that the first thing they would want to eat would be McDonalds or KFC. Not at all… it’s a free world. Now. And they can put their mall wherever the hell they want. I’m not going to suggest anything different at all… please smell my sarcasm… it was ridiculous. Such a gorgeous city shouldn’t be hidden behind a behemoth of an atrocity as this ENORMOUS 4 storey modern cathedral to consumerism.

Enough ranting (On that subject). My first real impression of Poland was the walk to the Hostel “Bling Bling” accompanied by two young Canadian girls from Manitoba (? I think…) whom had sat, giggling constantly, only a few rows away from me the entire journey from Berlin, and I had not spoken to them apart from apologizing to one of them when I accidentally ran into her outstretched elbow when walking down the isle to the toilet. Anyway, we got off the train at roughly the same time, and as I was walking past them on the platform I heard them ask one of the people selling hostel rooms where they might find this So-Called “Bling Bling” Hostel… I told them that they could follow me as I was staying there as well, and we quickly got slightly lost on the way. Mainly, I conclude and insist, because they are girls and girls can’t read maps and they wouldn’t give it to me to look at. On-top of that, the directions given by the booking website on how to get there were relatively vague (under the orange roof? I don’t see an orange roof!) Bastards.

Bling Bling Hostel was an experience. I think that’s the nicest thing I could say about it. Although for 2 of the 4 nights I stayed there, I DID have a bed in a room to myself… which was nice. Apart from that… there were only 2 bathrooms (yes, mum, they were bathrooms… they were where you had your shower AND toilet) for the whole of the hostel which you had to walk through reception from the rooms to get to. The showers were cold. And my room entered directly from reception, in which the particular person on duty for the night shift would, without fail, sit and talk loudly in Polish for the majority of the time that I wanted to sleep. The internet hardly worked at all… and when it did, was so slow as to make it virtually pointless to use. It DID have a free washing machine, which would have been fantastic to advertise, as I had – just the night before – gone and spent Time and Euros on washing clothes at a Laundromat in Berlin. I’m sure I could go on, but I won’t. I don’t want to sound like I’m whining about a hostel, which despite its oddly okay reviews, DID only cost me about 12 Euro a night to stay in.

The first night in town, I got persuaded into going out to get something to eat. So I walked to the town square or Market square which is enormous and surrounded by every kind of restaurant you can imagine, and eventually settled on a little place down an alley that served traditional meals. Quite nice… I had “meat” filled things… parcels of pasta/pastry-ish substance and a salad. Both of which I was very happy with and were very nice. And very cheap. After that it was decided that we needed dessert, so we went and got some amazing ice-cream. Really fantastic. I’ll say nothing of the fact that I think the ice-cream would have actually frozen more if we’d taken it outside… it was freezing but it was nice… overall it was a pleasant, not too giggly, evening.

The next day I went to Auschwitz. What an experience that was… although wandering around the barbed-wire surrounded camp was sobering in itself, really two things touched me much more deeply – one was the room that was literally full to the roof with shoes. The other was a wall on which was written in tiny writing the names of 60,000 people taken from the Netherlands to the Camp… of all the tings these two displays really hit home the most and hurt the deepest. And I really don’t want to dwell on the experience, except to say that it should be on everyone’s list of things to do before they die. Amazing.

The following day I went to the other, less intimidating, tourist attraction in the area – the 700+ year old salt mine. I mean… it was good… but after Auschwitz it was really just a hole in the ground… *shrugs* that’s really all I have to say about it. I mean it was nice…

Whatever.

Next stop – North to Denmark and Copenhagen… Land of Vikings and tall blonde women…

Fantastic…

The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.
- Oscar Wilde

Vienna, Berlin, Australia day and A Pepperoni by Another Name... ?

What can I say about the last few days… since I last checked in from Vienna? Did I mention Vienna? I don’t remember. Anyway, Vienna was the same as when I was the same as when I was there last time, funny enough, except staying about half an hours walk from the “circle” along a long shopping street… the same stores as you would see in any shopping street in Europe, pretty much… the only other difference is that I was here last time in May-ish. So the weather was a lot better… it was so windy that I couldn’t even stand still to take a photo unless sheltered by a building…. Couldn’t even lean against a tree… amazing. And it left me not so amazingly pissed me off… anyway, I managed to walk around the whole city and get back in time to go to sleep.

The first night I got into Vienna I met some cool people and, in the way of Hostels Everywhere, we decided to go on a little pub crawl. It was good fun and ended up at of all places an Australian pub in the middle of the city with a Coopers Sparkling ale… fantastic. The second night I was there we were a little more… subdued. Sitting around chatting about nothing in particular, a girl walks over and plonks her self down, and turns out to be a 4^th year med student from Flinders Uni in Adelaide. Crazy. Anyway, she was on a weekend trip down to Vienna from Prague where she’s doing a 2 month placement thingy… naturally we got chatting and in the end decided to catch up again in Prague and go and have a drink or something… and that’s about all that happened in Vienna that was really interesting… it really is a gorgeous city and still one of my favorites for no real reason that I can really put my finger on… nope. Been sitting here trying to decide what it is… cant think.

Prague on the other hand was, and always has been; pretty much top of my list of places to go to when I was in Europe. Again, not for any particular reason. Although I’d heard the beer was cheep and the women gorgeous… I don’t really think they were the reasons… I don’t know. Anyway Prague turned out to be very much like Vienna and Budapest in its design… on a river. Gorgeous old buildings… Like Budapest it is overlooked from one of the hills in the city by quite an imposing castle. More so than the one in Budapest because it is still more in once piece because of the lack of bombing… That is one of the amazing things about Prague, is that it was never bombed in the war… so although it has left all of the buildings in their original state… because all the other cities did was in a lot of cases re-build all the nice buildings, Prague has the effect of just having really big old dirty buildings. This is obviously why people seem to always say that it’s such a black city… I didn’t find that at all… I found it, like Budapest, Dirty. But not dirty in the same grimy way as Budapest, more in a lived-in sort of way… its hard to explain unless you’ve been there… or seen my photos which with any luck and lack of procrastination on my behalf, should appear on Facebook at any time… watch that space…

So anyway, met up with Emma – the girl from Adelaide a few times which was nice… had some traditional foods; goulash, bread dumplings, roast duck, wild boar, Chinese... Beer... One night we went out and actually had Hungarian… I hadn’t eaten out in Hungary, so I thought I’d try their traditional food as well… Turned out to be an amazing if not rather expensive evening… very good food and a bottle of nice Hungarian wine… all down in a restaurant, which seemingly like most of the restaurants in the Czech Republic seem to be in old wine cellars or breweries… very cool. And once you stopped hearing the terrible Hungarian music, the atmosphere was really quite… atmospheric. Um. Another time we had Beer flavored Ice cream. And yes. It was terrible…

Fitted a lot in a few days… considering at least twice I slept until after mid-day.

Went up to the castle, took some photos, walked around the city, took some photos… actually walked almost from one end of the old city to the other… from an old but gorgeous grave yard and church to the castle… was amazing, but I had sore feet by the end of it. Over the oldest bridge in the world (I think – sounds good though doesn’t it) past all the statues, including one that we decided was St Hilton, cause he had 5 stars in his halo. It really is a gorgeous city… I have a feeling I’ll go back there eventually…

And I think that’s about all I did in Prague…

From there I was headed to Berlin and Australia day… I really found I didn’t know that much about Berlin, in any respect, apart from obviously about the fact they had the east/west wall thing that came down, and Pink Floyed played… and um… Nazi stuff… which you sort of learn a bit about unless you specifically study history. Which I didn’t. But I DID do geography. So I knew where it was at least. Anyway, my first few days were really spent doing very little… just wandering around a bit taking the odd photo here and there… they have some amazing grafiti in Berlin.. Anyway, Australia day came and we headed out at like 3pm ish I think... it was early anyway, even for Australians… fantastic… went to a pub that had advertised some Australian things… music etc… the only beer they had was VB. And the obligatory Fosters on tap… so I ended up having Strongbow cider… a few shots of jaegermeister with red bull and a crown lager which we’d picked up from the Australia shop earlier that day, where the girl realized we were Aussies and gave us a mintie. So funny… anyway, it was a really good night, and I didn’t get really drunk which was amazing and fortuitous, because I was up in time the next day to go on the walking tour of Berlin. We went from the pub to a pizza place which had a huge range of pizzas… I decided on pepperoni with chicken… sounded nice... but apparently pepperoni is like a not hot chili in Germany, so I was a little disappointed when the pizza came out with these enormous green things on it… not happy. But whatever…

Even though it was raining … not hard, but frustratingly steady all day, it was a good tour, and I learned a lot more about the city which according to the guide, is mostly a replica, having been 90% bombed and flattened in the Second World War. Fantastic.

You’d almost never know…

Highlights were the Jewish memorial square, which is an amazing piece of landscape architecture that is left open to the individual as to the specific meaning of it, but LOOKS like an enormous grave yard with graves of differing heights from 1 to I guess 12 feet high. Walking through it is completely different to looking at it thought, and I felt distinctly like a small child lost in a sea of imposing huge adults… quite an interesting feeling.

Anyway… my general opinion of Berlin was that it’s getting there. It has some great old architecture, museums statues, etc… and it has some fantastic new architecture, like the dome above parliament, the TV tower, the bank which is actually a whale, and the train station Hopfbahnhof which is without a doubt the most amazingly designed train station I’ve ever seen… sooo cool.

Anyway, I’m running out of describing words… so I’ll leave by saying that I’m on the train to Krakow sitting on the most uncomfortable seats I’ve had so far… they feel like cardboard with one enormous spring underneath… shitty… ALMOST but not quite as bad as the coffee I just bought…

Ciao.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In Hungary; Cold, Tired & Alone…

After leaving Tess at the airport I was relieved to feel nearly nothing when Betty boarded an airport shuttle bus at 8.30 this morning. It could be because I have only been awake for about 40 minutes, it could b anything, but its probably nothing.

Last night we (after I waited 40 minutes for Betty at the station) wandered around Budapest in what seemed like a completely random manner, but eventually ended up at a street where Betty announced her favorite Teahouse was. It was a very “alternative” sort of place, dark corners, incense, candles, beanbags, and of course… Tea. All sorts of teas mixed with different herbs and things like rosehip and dandelion ankle. Not really. But you get my gist… it was very nice, so we stayed there for a while and had a pot of Tea each. Which is an enormous amount of tea I realized later when my bladder was nearly bursting. And a chocolate biscuit.

From there, with Betty’s completely hopeless sense of direction we eventually made it to what translated as the “Square of Heroes-sort-of” although surprisingly that isn’t a very literal translation as Hungary apparently doesn’t like too many people, let alone heroes… anyway it was somewhere I had been on my Contiki and since the photos of that part of my journey are in Limbo it was lovely to see it again… It really is a beautifully made square decked out with more Heroes-sort-of than you could throw a stick at… and a good thing they aren’t alive, cause they don’t look like the sort of people you’d want to throw a stick at. Very Big Swords. The square its self is surrounded on 2 sides by quite nice looking museums and on the back by the Danube river of which a large section has been frozen and turned into an ice skating park. So we decided to go skating… this was much bigger than the rink I went on with Tess out the front of the Natural History Museum in London, but crowded as it was and the fact that the ice desperately needed Zamboniing made it no more or less fun than the last time. After an hour skating my butt still hurts… not from falling over mind you, just from using muscles that otherwise don’t get used… Anyway, it was a really beautiful setting with the medieval castle in the background – Cinderella style, but as with the rest of Budapest, before the glass slipper…

After that and seemingly endless bus, tram and underground changes later, we got to a mall where Betty and her friend Marie-Claude were going to watch a movie. Instead I decided to climb a hill… it turned out not to be the hill that I thought I was going to climb. Actually it was better for 2 reasons. The first being that it was a considerably smaller hill, and the second that the view and the remains of old Buda lit up at night time were absolutely breathtaking. I had been there during the day with Contiki but from another direction, so until reaching an enormous but nearly completely scaffold covered cathedral, I really still didn’t know where I was… after taking a silly amount of photos, I Came back down and sat in the mall and momentarily picked up some free internet from nearby… just enough time to poke some people on Facebook… and then we went back to the train station and picked up my backpack. The place we entrusted it to looking like it might have body’s hanging on hooks in a cool room out the back and racks of shotguns and AK-47s JUST out of sight, yet still within reach… My bag was in one piece anyway, so I shouldered it to the slight gasps of all watching and continued on my way…

From there we made the hour tram/bus/subway ride back to Marie-Claude’s house, had a very nice Hungarian Stew and some sausages made with God-I-Hope-This-Is-Rice… then I went to sleep.

Woke up. Decided to not come to see Betty off as I was sleepy, then changed my mind when I realized, or whatever you want to call it, that if I didn’t get up I would stay in bed ALL day and sleep. And seeing as how I leave tomorrow I thought I should take the opportunity to see the city sans enormously awkward backpack.

So now I’m sitting in of all places not a Starbucks (sorry dad, I was looking for a mug!) but a Gloria Jeans Coffee shop at the top of a 4 or 5 story shopping centre looking out over a relatively busy intersection and a Tram/Bus stop and a city that while in Places Filthy, Graffitied, Vandalized and so Post-Communist-eastern-block that I feel as though I could be in Russia itself (but for the fact that there are FAR fewer big fluffy hats). Its has Beauty, History and a certain Charm that’s maybe easiest to describe as “like Vienna’s Little Dirty Homeless Brother” and a population that, from what I’ve experienced, are friendly, and happier than they seemingly rightly should be.

Only thing is that their language is so strange… really not easy to make sense of. At least in French, German, Italian, and Spanish you can generally find SOME similar or recognizable words to make some sense of a sentence or sign. Here everything is S’s G’s Z’s and Y’s. Betty said something about it being most similar to one of the Scandinavian countries languages, which one I forget… but its interesting and I guess no more unlikely than the fact that Bosco-Gurin in Switzerland is still speaking the same ancient German dialect that they were when they settled there in the 1200’s even thought the surrounding country speaks Italian in that area… Or maybe its because they speak Italian… *shrugs* maybe they didn’t like Italy. Who knows.

The other end of the day…

All this touristy shit has been put into perspective just now… crossing the road a few minutes ago to see the remains of a Husky that must have been hit hard by a car – its owner inconsolably crying.. traffic going slowly around, people gawking… it really was terrible… Otherwise my day was good…. I was a movie to fill in a few hours. American Gangster with Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington… really a very good film, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to nearly anyone. From there I hopped on a tram and came back to the part of the city that I saw on my brief stay with Contiki… wandered around for a while and then headed up the other mountain… the one I though I was going up yesterday, Got a lot more photos. Particularly interesting was an enormous murder of crows. I’ve NEVER seen so many in one place.. I don’t know if that’s meant to be good or bad luck… Bad I guess if you have a Husky just about to be hit by a car. Or the driver of the car too I guess…Not good… the image is burned into my head. Not an image I wanted to take away from Budapest…

And right now I’m sitting in a very small face and apart from an Australian couple from Melbourne, here on school holidays with their kids, that I just had a chat to and who just left, I’m the only one here… the Waitresses friend and her have been sitting reading, and her friend keeps looking over at me and smiling… *coughs* anyway, its really quite quiet, its warm, and the coffee is okay… Its just that I have a headache and I have to wait for Marie-Claude to finish work and some other stuff, then I’ll get back, re-type this as I wrote it in a notepad, and go to sleep before I head to Vienna tomorrow. Can’t wait – they have an Aussie pub and its Gorgeous at night time… like here but clean.

More soon

Ciao

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
- Pablo Picasso

On a train again...

Apologies once again for the gap in the entries, and I’m sure there’s less people reading this now more than ever…

My Current entry finds me, slightly motion sick, slightly claustrophobic, and very much alone in a sleeper carriage on an 11 and a half hour train journey from Zurich, Switzerland to Budapest, Hungary… I’ve just spent the most amazing 5 days with Tess, and Cornelia and Paul, Mum’s friends (and mine too now I suppose) from Bosco-Gurin, the town where Mum’s surname comes from, maybe I’ve told you that before… whatever. It was lovely. They are the most hospitable and giving people ever, nothing was too much trouble and everything was organized for us… The town is this amazing little place with a population of only about 50 but they have the smallest supermarket in Switzerland and one of the oldest Churches, plus it was settled in 1240 something… before there was even a Switzerland… quite amazing. Now they have a ski lift and it attracts quite a few snow bunnies from all over. Very nice. On top of all that they had just had a meter and a half of fresh snow and it was gorgeous. I mean, I’ve seen snow before, but this was the soft fluffy stuff you only see in movies… it’s unfortunately still cold and wet… but fun nonetheless…

I’d just like to add that I don’t know how people who can’t touch type can sit on a bus or train and stare at their computer screens all day… Its now the morning and I can sit and stare out the window as I type. Which is nice s my mind can wander as I dribble shit on my computer. Much more interesting that sitting staring at the screen. I’ve just entered Hungary, and I should only be a matter of an hour or so away from Budapest. So apart from the matter of the “a” key sometimes failing to register that I’ve touched it, the touch typing is going quite well.

I’ve thought about a lot of things that I could and should tell you all about, but now that I actually get time to sit down and type them out, I dither can’t remember, or they seem unimportant or silly. I know I was laying in bed one night thinking… and then I was thinking about thinking, and how much amazing it is that we can think, but how much of a pain in the ass it is when you’re trying to sleep at 3 am. See what I mean?

Nothing too much bad has happened at this point – I did find an amazing deal on a 4gb SD card from a camera store that has since proved to be too good to be true – it doesn’t work either in my camera or in my computer. Bit pissed off about that, but not much I can do about it now. Might try and see if I can get it swapped over when I get back to Adelaide… I know Harvey’s can do a dodgy docket up for me… but Can and Will are two different things… *shrugs* oh well… we’ll see. And my phone seems to work only intermittently, depending on the area I’m in and the service provider that my phone picks up. A tad annoying as there are people that I need to contact and I’m not sure how or when I’ll next have internet. Although the hostels I’ve booked in both Vienna and Prague both say they have internet – we’ll see how much they want to charge me for the usage. Always a killer I’ve found.

On a good note – the cold/pain in my ass/flu that I’ve had for nearly a month now seems to be getting better… the cough has all but disappeared and there’s only a relatively small amount of sinus fluid (Snot) trickling down the back of my throat. Lovely, eh? Anyway, I’m blaming the cure on the amazingly clean Swiss air. If it gets worse again in Hungary then I’m moving to Switzerland permanently. Only joking… but it was VERY nice. And I think I could pick up German relatively quickly… I do understand about one in 50 words already! It’s a start.

Its funny being alone again now that Tess has gone home. Big empty space there. It hurts like hell… I guess when something that you’re used to and you love is taken away from you, but you get used to the pain. I know I always have. Unfortunately.

Anyway, as I think of more, I’ll let you know, for now I’m going to put this away before I get too much more motion sick and I have to throw up the half a week old Croissant that I was given by the train company for breakfast.

Ciao

If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough
- Mario Andretti

Random Ramblings

I need to stop spending money. Hi… so, yeah, life is good at the moment, I’m in a perpetual state of “what the fuck is going on” but life is good… One moment to the next it is different. Physically I’m fine, emotionally I’m a little imbalanced but its nothing I haven’t felt before and got thru it. Although I do seem to always feel on the edge of the precipice sometimes called a panic attack – I seem to be able to push myself back from the edge when it seems to get too close. One day I might hurl myself off the edge, but for the time being I think I’m safe.

University looms larger and larger every day, as does the fact (which I’m trying not to think about) that I’m going to be a student very soon – you might think they’re the same issue, but University excites me… however being a student is a scary prospect, not the least of the issues being financial. It will be interesting to be going to school with a bunch of kids that are literally most of them at least 10 years younger than me. I’m obviously hopeful that as seems to be the trend these days, there will be several mature aged students doing the same thing as me, but I have to think that the numbers will be small.

I also think of the palm reader who I met in New Orleans who said I would have 2 great loves, the second of whom I would meet while studying. I am assuming the first was my ex-wife… whom I loved… most of the time… well… some of the time... Occasionally at least… I thought I had loved since… but to be truthful I don’t think I’ve been truly in Love… its hard to compare an 8 year relationship to something like what I’ve had since… ranging from a 6 month long distance relationship, to several that have lasted less than a month. Although I AM proud to say, none that have only lasted over-night. But back to my point – and not to make too much of it, but I didn’t tell him I was going back to school, and that I’d been married… it was interesting that he said those things. He also said I’d have 4 kids and live into my 90s… neither of which at this point of my life necessarily appeal to me greatly. Although I’m sure when the time comes… yeah. You know what I mean. Maybe.

So yeah, anyway, my second great love is apparently waiting for me at Uni. But it IS a 5 year course, who knows when it will be.

In other more exciting news, I just had a hair-cut.

I guess since I Last wrote – god knows how long ago that was… I have had a promotion at work… I’m now bar supervisor/head barman… what that means literally is a bit more money in my pocket every week – although now I’m “seeing” someone (I think… it’s complicated) that money seems to be going just as fast as before, if not faster. No more… it needs to go into the bank. I know I can do it… and she’s not needy or wanty, so it should be fine. Plus she’s in the same boat financially and will understand my need to save money.

So in that respect the new manager at work has been great. As in all respects actually. She’s great. She’s actually asked me to stay and go to Uni here, offered me free accommodation and everything… hard to pass up an offer like that, apart from the fact that the course here – I’m pretty sure – is 7 years instead of 5… the cost of living is ridiculous… something that can’t be alleviated by free rent (although it would go along way to helping) and I do really like the girl I’m seeing at the moment… I can’t do it… I don’t know if I’ll regret this decision down the track… I really don’t… which makes me afraid that it might be the wrong one… but I think I want to go to Uni in Adelaide. I think.

What else has happened?? I bought a leather jacket… which is cool…

I went and saw the Stage performance of Wicked yesterday… that was amazing… the girl with the lead part had an AMAZING voice… absolutely breathtaking, skin tingling voice… but the story was Way different from the book… not bad different, just very simplified obviously… its hard to sing a story without taking some fairly hefty artistic licenses… you need to make things rhyme for god’s sake… that’s not the easiest thing in the world… if life was a musical (heaven forbid) everything would have to rhyme all the time, it would suck.

Oh, and I should have internet at home soon… which will also be cool. Although I think that maybe my webcam is broken, which sucks… but we’ll see.

Anyway, I think that’s about it… no promises, but I’ll try to write soon.

Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
- Edward R. Murrow

Checking in...

There is nothing special about today. There is no reason for me to write an entry in my ever thinning journal of the life and times of Me. Of course there was the unexpected but not by any means unwelcome surprise of Kathryn and Elizabeth – my cousins from Adelaide messaging me at 4oclock yesterday afternoon asking me if I was at work for them to drop in on me. That was a really nice surprise, I guess even though, having lived most of my life NOT in Adelaide, and only seeing them when we’d take the long drive from Whyalla during the school holidays, or, even less, when I would come to Adelaide from Tasmania in the 8 years that I was there, I guess I don’t know them as well as I’d like. Yet it was still nice to have familiarity and family around for a few hours and we talked almost as though we had known each other for most of our lives. Instead of knowing OF eachother… If that makes sense.

I guess it does a bit.

Anyway, that was a nice surprise and it somewhat lifted my spirits that have been somewhat drooping over the last few months as I think fondly of home and the cost of living. Having said THAT, I have still been able to save a considerable chunk of the money that I’ll need to pay off my credit card that has slowly been working its way up to a difficult sum… especially as a future student and part time employee of a random pub somewhere in Adelaide. And getting a meal every day and accommodation has had a lot to do with that. I guess if I can save that money up before I get back and have a 0 balance on everything I’ll be satisfied – somehow I can’t see that happening. I have a terrible tendancy to follow my father’s habit of buying things I don’t necessarily need. This has mostly displayed itself in the purchase of clothing. In particular T-shirts. Which seeing as how Winter in the Northern Hemisphere is fast approaching – are going to be virtually useless.

And not writing my daily memoirs is somehow making me worry that I’m going to be repeating myself constantly every time I DO make an entry… Apologies.

In other news, my Pub has a new manager, A Canadian lady who everyone loves.. will be interesting to see how that goes. But whatever happens I’m only here for another few months anyway. And life goes on…

That’s about all I have to say right now…



The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive.
- John Sladek

*coughs* Anyone There?

So, once again I find my self sitting in starbucks, wasting my time on things of really no importance… no one I know is online and I figured it has been too long since I wrote something on my Blog. One disadvantage to this is that fewer people will read it, although I guess that could be seen as an advantage also, as it really doesn’t matter what I write.

Life in a pub is a cyclical fast paced blur of beer, cleaning, anger and laughter… as in most jobs I guess it has its good and bad times- fast days and days that drag forever… Life in a pub is an experience that I’ve always been curious about, and now that I’ve had it for a couple of months, will be glad to see the end of. I’m not saying I don’t love it. I do, in a crippling, sadistic way; a place where I can work fast and hard and not use my brain at all…it’s all that I wanted in a job this year and it’s a bit of an experiment in life I guess. I do know I’ve added it to the list of jobs that I don’t understand how people could do forever. But after reading more into my Horoscope/Astrological profile, that may be more me than the job. It says that I’m a drifter and very rarely satisfied in one job… So true… Having said THAT, for the time being I am going to stick it out at the pub. It’s an awesome way to meet new people, and although most of them are small part players in the psychological thriller that is my life… who knows which of them may end up playing a larger part? That goes for everyone I meet every day I guess.

I love the randomness of life… I love looking back on moments that changed the course of what, where and who I am… Tess for example has turned out to be a completely random and interesting part of my year, and I know I’ve got in her, at the very least, a friend for life. Peri is the same, she’s going to be a friend for ever, I have no doubt of that. As too will Meredith… funnily enough, probably all these random people that I’ve met will turn out more important to me than any of the people that I met and traveled with on my Contiki. Although, who knows? Life is strange… no telling what’s around the corner for those people either… and life twists and turns on its merry way…

And that’s all I’m going to write for now… everyday occurrences in pub life really don’t seem to warrant writing about, although in the last few months I have had probably heaps of things to write about… looking back, even on things from yesterday they seem not to matter too much. Even the bomb scare that evacuated the pub, Tess’ second visit, the horrifically neglected state of our staff kitchen, and the fact that apparently I have an attractive bottom… to name only a few things… not that they weren’t all interesting things in their own rights, but I just cant be bothered remembering enough about them to fill in space on the page…

I won’t promise a new update soon, but I hope to write more frequently in the coming weeks/months.



We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered. - Tom Stoppard